The little boy's body came to a rest several miles away from where it had fallen into the water, the unfeeling currents sweeping him along, dunking his head down into the sightless depths to quell any protests. It held its grip on him for so long that he had lost all sense of time before finally throwing him up onto its bank, long after his consciousness had left him.

"What the...?" A figure peered down from the lip of the bank at the boy. He carefully made his way to him, gasping in shock when he was close enough to keenly observe. "Holy crap!" He exclaimed. He quickly got a bearing of his surroundings, looking this way and that to make sure that no one was around, and scooped up the child into his arms. He held him gingerly as he climbed back up the bank and trotted off into the Wastes.

It was several hours before the boy finally awoke. He sat up and yawned, stretching his tiny arms outward. He realized, when his hand accidentally hit against the wall next to him, that he was not sleeping where he was supposed to be. He looked around, realizing that he was sitting in a bed in a small shack that seemed to barely be able to accommodate one person. Next to his bed was a hot plate plugged into a small generator and a dresser full of clothes.

"You're awake. I hope that you slept well." A cracking, strained voice called from behind him. "You looked like you had just had a Hell of a time when I found you by the river." The boy turned around to look at who his savior was. Upon getting a glance at the man standing in the doorway, he screamed in horror. Monster! He had been kidnapped by some sort of monster!

"Whoa, whoa, calm down!" The man said, caught off guard by the sudden shrieks. He moved closer to the boy - He looked like a walking skeleton with his skin tightened and so hard over his bones that they were cracking and splitting. His nose and ears were completely gone, and so was most of his hair. His flesh looked like sandpaper. The boy jumped back, pressing against the wall.

"PLEASE GO AWAY PLEASE MONSTER DON'T HURT ME!" He shouted, shutting his eyes to try and wish the beast away.

"I'm not a monster, kid! I'm just like you!" He took a step towards the little boy, who only forced his body against the wall harder, as if he would eventually magically phase through it.

"NO! I'M A HUMAN! YOU'RE A MONSTER!" He cried. The beastly man suddenly stopped, the growing worry in his face to try and placate the child suddenly replaced by a momentary confusion.

"Kid...Have you seen yourself?" He asked. The child's screams calmed into frightened sniffles until the question finally sank in. He slowly opened one eye, looking at the man and realizing that he was not trying to devour his nubile young frame. He turned to him completely.

"N...No...?" The boy answered hesitantly. The man ran a hand over his bald head, which gave off an unpleasant scraping noise.

"I think maybe you ought to look at this." He said awkwardly. Turning, he picked up a slightly cracked and dirty, but still serviceable, mirror that was sitting on top of his dresser and held it to the boy. The child peered into it, his eyes growing as wide as saucers as he stared at his reflection - bald, skinny, torn, dry skin. He looked just like a smaller version of the man he had been calling a monster. He backed against the wall once more before sliding down into a sitting position, bewildered.

"That's....Me?" He asked, his voice quivering.

"The water in the Potomac is too irradiated for a normal person to survive falling into..." The man explained, though the lecture wasn't helping to alleviate the uncomfortableness of the situation. "But you're like me...Radiation doesn't...Uh...Doesn't hurt you. It only changes you..." The boy brought his knees to his chest and sunk his head inside. He began to cry. "Oh geez, kid, come on, it'll be alright. Come on..." He moved closer to comfort the child as best he could.

That had been over twenty years ago when they had first met - The boy just an innocent child, the man a good-hearted but confused survivor. It was a little sad to think about the fact that if the child had not been changed into the horrifying creature he had become, they would not have been able to bond as they did, but as far as they knew they were two of a kind in a desolate land, and that brought them together.

The man, Helike, and his young charge, now matured himself, stalked through the dunes of the Wastes, armed with a few scavenged hunting rifles.

"You see, back when I was in the army," Helike whispered to his adopted son, "Yeah, fighting prowess, strength, that was all important, but the most important thing that a soldier could ever have was loyalty." He peeked over the hill that he was perched on, looking for anything below that was moving.

"Loyalty?" His apprentice parroted.

"Definitely. Loyalty to your country, to your superiors, to your platoon and comrades." He stared down the iron sights of his rifle. "Not like the monumental screw-up that lead to this whole mess, where the only thing that mattered to any soldier on either side was who had the best armor and the biggest guns. A lack of honor is what drove the world into this state, kid, and ain't it a lovely world it is." He asked rhetorically, following the wandering Mole Rat with his gun. With one, practiced shot, he brought it crumbling to the ground. "Ha! Got you, ya little bastard." Helike stood and made his way down the hill to his prize.

"You've taught me so much, Helike." His squire smiled, following a few steps behind him. "How to hunt, how to survive, and how I should live my life..." He thought back to how, if it wasn't for Helike, he wouldn't have any life to live anyway.

"Hey, the credit all goes to you, kid." His master turned and gave him a sidelong wink. "You can't teach anything to the student who don't want to learn. Now help me carry this thing back to the shack."

He was only a few feet away from his kill when the loud sound of stomping feet alerted him.

"What the - HOLY SHIT!" Helike dove out the way as a large, black beast charged past, grabbing the dead Mole Rat in its wicked looking teeth. It wasted no time in lifting its entire body up and charging off.

"What the Hell is that thing?! Some sort of bear??" Helike's young apprentice asked, helping his master up.

"I don't know, but it just took our god damn food!"

The young man watched the monster running off into the distance and felt a fire rising in his stomach. As soon as Helike was back on his feet, his son picked up his dropped hunting rifle and crouched down, pressing its butt into his shoulder and taking aim.

"Not today, you bastard..." He murmured through clenched teeth, taking several moments to place the shot precisely. After a second's hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

The shot went wild, flying past the black monstrosity without so much as plucking off a hair.

"...Fuck!" The young man stood up, throwing his rifle to the ground. Helike sighed.

"Well, there goes our dinner for tonight."

"What? Come on, Helike, we can still keep hunting." His apprentice turned to him.

"It's getting dark, kid. You don't want to be out in the Wastes at sundown. Come on, we can soldier up and spend a night without that slop anyway."

The young man sighed. "Yes, sir. You're right."

Helike nodded and lead the way back to his little shack, arriving just as the sun gently dipped into the horizon.

"Well, we don't have any food, we might as well get some sleep, then. We'll set out for a new hunt first thing in the morning.

"Yeah, good idea." His young charge agreed. The two men pulled off their makeshift clothing, stitched together from random bits of leather and skin from animals they killed, and gave them a quick dip in a large basin full of worryingly green water, scrubbing off any dirt and dead skin (their clothes tended to accumulate a lot of that) before hanging them out on a clothesline to dry. They then took apart, cleaned, re-assembled, and reloaded their guns, setting them carefully at their bedsides, before retiring for the night.

"Goodnight, kid. And don't worry, I bet tomorrow's bounty'll be twice as good as any shitty Mole Rat meat." Helike assured his apprentice as he put out the flame of the lantern he had scavenged up, surrounding the duo in darkness.

"Yeah...Yeah, I bet so, too." And with that, the two men went to sleep.

The young boy found himself in his family's bomb shelter, standing over Alex's body. He stared at it.

"Alex?" He asked naively, crouching down to be more at level with the fresh body. "Alex? Are you hurt?" He shook the cadaver gently with his hand, trying to wake it up. When he pulled it away, he realized it was suddenly coated with a thick, red liquid. The liquid began to sizzle and boil, suddenly eating away the flesh of his hand, all the way down to the bone. "AAAAAAAHHH!" He screamed in horror and pain.

"What was that?" Thor's voice, deeper, growling, reverberating around the room, asked from the Wastes above. The entire bunker shook as giant footsteps stomped down the stairs. The boy backed up against the wall as Thor, Zeus, Tank and Hansel entered into the room, giants, their faces the faces of a monstrous black, bear-like beast, mouths drooling the same red liquid that had disintegrated his hand. "There's the little bastard!" He grinned. The boy shrieked, running right at the four behemoths and diving between their legs, charging up the stairs.

"GET HIM!" Thor roared. The entire world shook. The child ran as fast as he could, but the stairs seemed to go on forever. He heard the distant sounds of the four monsters chasing after him. He felt something cold grab hold of him and turned back, screaming as the naked body of his sister had jumped up, straddling his back. He continued running, trying to shake it off, when suddenly he felt even heavier. Alex, too, had jumped and grappled him, drenching the boy's body in the warm red water. Donna and Howard's headless corpses followed next, jumping on him in a dogpile. He kept trying to run, but the weight of the bodies had slowed his minuscule frame to a crawl. Eventually he buckled under the weight. The shell of bodies began to pull him in, consume him.

"Kid! Quick! Grab my hand!" Helike called out to the boy. He looked up through the corpses, seeing his master peering inside, his arm stretched out to him. With all his might, he climbed up through the world of flesh and blood, even though hands were reaching out to pull him back down. He finally took Helike's hand, who managed to easily pull him out of the cave. "Whoo. That was a close one, kid." Helike smiled. The boy looked up to thank him, but saw a looming figure behind his adopted father, who was none the wiser.

"Helike! Look out!" He tried to shout, but it was too late. An explosion rang out as Helike's torso all but disappeared, showering his blood and bone all over the young boy.

He awoke with a gasp, laying in a pool of sweat. Sitting up, he looked down to make sure that Helike was still there, breathing a sigh of relief to see that his master was perfectly fine, sleeping serenely.

The dreams were getting worse and worse. Seeing your family die when you're not even in the double-digits yet is bound to have that effect on a person. But this was the first time that he had a dream that involved Helike. That involved Helike dying. It sent shivers down his back. No, he wasn't going to let that happen. He stood up out of bed and picked up his hunting rifle after quickly donning his damp clothes. No, he wasn't going to lose Helike. Not to murder, not to starvation, not to anything. He picked up the lantern at his master's side and set out into the Wastes.

Several fruitless hours passed. Frankly, the young man did not understand Helike's warnings at all. He had not seen a damn thing out in the dunes, much less anything that could possibly hurt him. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the crusty grating sound of sandpaper skin on sandpaper skin that he had long since become accustomed to and kept watching. He suddenly took notice of a distant, heavy sound. The sound of something stomping. Could it be the black beast from earlier that had stolen their kill? He stood up from his prone position on the ground, ready to go on for a second round. This time, he wouldn't miss.

"Over there!" He heard someone shout, realizing that the stomping he heard wasn't from one, large creature, but a bunch of people marching in unison. He didn't have any time to react before a sharp, biting pain entered into the fat of his thigh. He gave a sharp shout and stumbled to the ground.

"Got him!" Another voice shouted. The people, seven in all, quickly converged on the wounded man.

"You sons of bitches!" He growled in pain, getting to his knees and lashing out at the darkness to try and hit anyone around him.

"This one's got fight in him!" A feminine voice laughed. The young man felt a foot slam into his gut. He guffawed as the air left his stomach and hit the ground once more. Three of the people pinned his arms and legs down as a bright light illuminated the immediate area.

"Ugh, what the fuck is that thing?" Someone wretched upon getting a full view of his face. The person holding down his left arm immediately drew back in disgust. The captured young man began lashing out at the ankles he could see with it, trying to cause any modicum of pain to any of these captors.

"Calm down, dumbasses. I've seen his type before. They call 'em Ghouls." The man talking replaced the disgusted one in pinning down the captive ghoul's arm. "Smart as a human, ugly as sin."

"Shit, we can't take it back, then. Who'd want to buy this repulsive motherfucker?"

"Yeah, let's just kill him and keep looking." Someone suggested. The hostage tried to fight against the people holding him down at these words, to no avail.

"Fuck that. We've been hunting all night long. No way, we're taking this one, I don't care what the boss says." There was a short murmur among the group of people.

"Fine, but if he doesn't like it, then it's your ass."

"Whatever."

The young ghoul felt the butt of a gun slam against the back of his head and blacked out.