Chapter 2: Out of the Frying Pan
Vault Boy shook himself out like a wet dog, soot flying helter-skelter, and somehow ended up squeaky-clean. He could hear more explosions in the distance; some of them very far away, some of them closer, even close enough to see. The suburb he was standing in, or rather on, was completely decimated. The street was torn up like an old ribbon, the street lights were ripped out of the ground and bent as an old man with a crooked spine, and the houses were reduced to mounds of dust & rubble. Where the creator stood not a minute before, there remained only a black silhouette in the shape of a man.
Amidst the ruins of the creator's house, something caught Vault Boy's eye. With a light, curious approach, he stepped forward and examined the object. It was a broken phonograph, hideously blackened and appearing far beyond any hope of restoration. Vault Boy frowned. "This little guy needs some tender loving care & repair!" he rhymed.
Picking up the phonograph he said, with his huge grin returning to his face, "You're comin' with me, little fella! I'm gonna see if I can get you fixed!" He made a motion that looked like he stuffed the phonograph into his pocket, despite his jumpsuit's lack of the aforementioned holder of miscellaneous items. When his hands withdrew, the phonograph had mysteriously vanished. "There we go!" Vault Boy chimed. "Nice n' safe!"
The explosions continued for about two more hours. Then, total silence. A hot wind blew, streams of dust flying in its wake. The few who miraculously survived the suburb's nuclear annihilation then began to dig themselves out of the mountains of detritus that had once been their dwellings. If home is where the heart is, then their hearts had surely been crushed under the rubble.
They looked at themselves, seeing their skin was horribly burnt. They scrambled for any reflective surface they could find: a shattered mirror, a shard of broken glass, anything. When they gazed into their reflections, they found the horrifying, grotesque faces of zombies staring back at them. It then dawned upon them that the charred, disfigured images weren't those of zombies, but of themselves.
The survivors began to cry, wail, & scream in horror and disbelief. Their minds averted from the misery for a split moment, and all eyes drifted to gaze upon the horrifying destruction, the irradiated remains of what had once been the state of California, of what had once been the world. Their cries intensified even further. One of the damned even fell to his knees, threw his arms into the air, and yelled into the gray, smoke-filled sky in a disgusting & raspy voice, "God, why have you forsaken us!?"
Vault Boy frowned again. His eyes caught a creature that had once been a woman. She had been consumed by hysteria, down on her hands & knees and staring at the ground. Taking pity on the zombie, Vault Boy attempted to console her.
"Aww come on miss, it's not so bad! You still have your health!"
The female looked up. "My health!? Look at me!! I'm a monster, a fucking monster!!" she wailed.
"Well, umm… You still have your life!"
"Yeah, a miserable life as a fucking freak living in a god-damned wasteland!!"
"Aww don't worry, things'll get better, I promise!"
"Things'll get better!? How the fuck will we ever recover from this!?"
"I… umm… I don't know, but somebody'll find a way!"
"Yeah right, that's bullshit!! There's no fucking hope for us!!" The tainted beast let her head back down and continued to cry.
Realizing that the best thing he could for these people at the moment was leave them alone, Vault Boy decided to set off into the world, or at least what was left of it. Marching forward at a steady tempo, his grin was plastered back onto his face, and he returned to his unnaturally optimistic self, with a little spring in each step.
Trekking through the desert sands, there was complete silence. Not a creature was in sight, not a mouse, a scorpion, a lizard, or a vulture. Even the wind was still as a corpse. All of a sudden, Vault Boy heard a loud "moo."
"OHMYGODWHATTHEHECKISTHAT!?" he screamed. All at once, his eyes & mouth grew cartoonishly huge, he spun around in the direction of the noise, pulled an SMG out of his invisible pocket, and unloaded an entire clip into the first thing he saw that moved.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!" Vault Boy screamed as he pumped the creature full of hot lead.
Once the clip emptied, he calmed down and examined what he was shooting at. It looked like some kind of freakish, mutated cow with two heads & extremely rough, brown hide. The bullet bath it received had mutilated it horribly: A huge chunk was blown out of its side, exposing the ribcage, its organs spilled out onto the ground, and blood ran out of it like a faucet, dying the sands a deep, sanguine red.
"Oh boy, lunch!"
((Author's note: I apologize for this chapter's short length. I wasn't feeling a lot of creative inspiration this time around, but the next chapter will be better.))