Man, Fanfiction doesn't give you the option to select Winthrop for stories but gives you freakin' Arkansas? Terrible oversight, people. This fic will involve OCs and quite a bit of invention on my part, since it's heading through areas that aren't really in the games. Also, this fic will only update every few weeks, but it won't be even near to as long as my others, so you won't be hanging forever. He'll still be popping up in the mains, too. :) Thanks much for the favs, and thanks for the review, Lady NeverAfterNon!
Sitting on an outcropping of rock in the failing sunshine, Gerry was trying to soak up as much warmth as he could find before he would have to go to ground for the still mercifully short night. He was looking out over a small valley in what he thought was the southern end of the Midwest Commonwealth, what had formerly been the state of Georgia. It hadn't held up any better than the shattered landscape he had come out of; true, most of the trees were still standing, but one unholy mother of a forest fire had ripped through all of them sometime in the proceeding months, leaving the whole valley he was in looking like it was populated with rotted, over-used toothpicks, the leftovers of the last cocktail party in Hell. Staring out at them, he decided his new stomping grounds left much to be desired. Gerry dropped his eyes back down, not having seen anything and tired of looking. "No more desire, no more dessert. Just deserted. Hallelujah."
He had moved out of the Florida panhandle entirely a week after his encounter with the four raiders, and stayed as far away from anything approaching civilization as possible to prevent another encounter, which unfortunately included roads and the signs thereon. The tussle he had had with them hadn't been the first, not by a long shot, wouldn't be the last either, but had come closer than any to ending him entirely, something he wasn't quite ready do do yet. Even as large as it was, and ignoring the fact that it was now for the most part, a colossal radioactive swamp, the idea of being hemmed in on any type of peninsula made him nervous. If there was nowhere to go anymore period, up here he had at least a lot more wiggle room to not get there in. Considering how bedamned cold it was, he was planning on a lot of wiggling.
For now, he was tossing pebbles at an empty Cram can to keep his hands busy, cheering quietly to himself whenever he managed to sink one in. Once he had exhausted the little pile, he would walk briskly enough to make himself warmer but not sweaty, sweat could kill you faster than anything out here if it was allowed to creep into your clothing, and make a nice, cozy nest in the hidey-hole he had scouted out earlier. He had found an overhang on the west facing slope of the valley, one that would be blissfully warm for half the night, and showed no recent signs of habitation, human or otherwise. Knowing he could go to sleep without the prospect of having to nip off anything frostbitten in the morning was so luxurious an idea it was almost obscene, especially considering how far inland he was.
It was warmer near the coast, even during the eternal night of the seemingly endless winter he had gone through. The only problem was, the larger cities were near the coast, or at least what was left of them(he thought even those that hadn't been directly hit were still going to need one shitload of fresh paint and new screen doors to make themselves presentable enough for him to come calling). Gerry had been floating back and forth in between the no man's land of smaller towns and forests hemmed in by the Atlantic and the tail end of the Appalachians, middling around in a sort of purgatory. Trying to cross over the mountains would be almost suicide; even in a regular winter the various Highway Departments had always had a hell of a time keeping the roads clear, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to go into the interior as it was. It didn't sound any prettier than where he currently was, if he went by what his little radio had said.
From the increasingly scattered reports he had heard, the frequency decreasing as the insanity of them went up, he had gotten the overwhelming impression that the nation's geographical makeup had gone out to lunch and stayed there; it was only corroboration for the horrendous ground shocks he had felt, one after another, after another, the blackened char of week-long fires he had seen painted on the dust thrown up by the detonations that had caused them. Considering the amount of warheads he knew that their country had had alone, he wasn't honestly surprised at the thought that the continents as a whole weren't quite in factory condition anymore. Gerry didn't think God would honour the warranty either, he was pretty sure bringing on the apocalypse early had skullfucked whatever the terms of agreement had been. "Don't matter if there was no money down, don't think we were finished with the payments yet. Adam and Eve should have read the fine print. No returns, no refunds, no exchange." He threw another pebble.
Heading into the interior had helped him to notice some other things. It was getting drier. Gerry wasn't quite sure if this was good or bad, although not having to worry about frigging radioactive snowstorms was definitely a plus. Since the sun had started punching through the murky cloud cover in earnest a month ago, there hadn't been much of anything, snow or rain or sleet, and while it was nice not to be pumping himself full of Rad-X or Rad Away half the time(he spent so often feeling nauseous that he was starting to feel off his stride when his guts weren't rolling over), he was getting more than a little concerned. It was still cold as a witches' tit, and now he had to worry about finding water on top of everything else. Gerry snorted. He had to worry about finding everything period. He looked up again, scanning, bleak blue eyes in a dirty face sheltered by an even dirtier hood.
"Find things. I found them. Why did I have to find them. Why do I have to be happy they're dead. Why can't I be dead."
His sister and his nephew, both gone, both dust now. He wished they had been dust when he had found them, if only not to know that it was them, or at least not to see the mangled things that they had turned into. He thought there were the parts of three other children buried with the boy. He wasn't sure what had belonged, and wanted to make sure he didn't leave anything out. His nephew had always gotten upset over misplacing his toys, missing an ear or a hand would have really fried his bacon. Half of him had looked like it was fried, and stuck to the floor when he-
Yanking his hood back, Gerry flung his other arm out in an oddly graceful gesture, one that in another, brighter world a man might have used when offering his hand to some seated lady as an invitation to dance, and then quickly brought his palm back across his own face with brutal force, the solid, meaty sound of the impact echoing partway down the hill. He dropped both back into his lap and sat silently for a few moments as his eye watered and an angry red weal rose up on the same cheek, then calmly picked up the next pebble.
"Stopped thinking about that. Good. I don't think about that anymore."
There had been advance warning on the Eastern seaboard after the Western was lit up like a Communist Christmas tree, something that had given him time to get himself out of the USSA installation he worked in and home, and from there up the highway, until the bombs had finally started to fall like fat, heavy rain. Mercifully, although he couldn't find any mercy for himself in what had happened, wouldn't allow himself to, he had been on a nondescript and unimportant stretch of blacktop when the shit had finally hit the Atlantic coast's fan, having chosen secondary roads instead of the panic-clogged main arteries. The unimportant places were the places that had survived. Gerry was of the firm opinion, at least in regards to himself, that the unimportant people had too. He clenched his hands, then relaxed, and threw another pebble. Gave a small cheer.
Going after his family had at least saved him, and in more ways than one. it had gotten him out range of the bombs aimed for the USSA and the larger cities, away from the anarchy along the coast, and the tidal wave that had moved up afterwards. Gerry's best bet was that that was a result of whatever had happened to Cuba, considering how far inland the water had made it. If he hadn't made it to higher ground, he would have drowned, and by the time he realized how easy it would have been to just run a little slower, just let the water take him away to be crushed by the debris and find a comfortable place to spend eternity rotting with all the other bodies, convenient doorstep-delivered companionship for the afterlife, it was too late and he was clinging to the top of a palmetto tree. He had fallen asleep up the damn thing, and he supposed that was just as well. It had kept the surviving whackjobs from seeing him, the bipedal vultures scrambling through the corpses for anything useful, caught up in a hoarding panic. Dying by them was something that definitely wasn't on his Armageddon to-do list, but nothing had hurt quite so much as the slices from those palm leaves. It was if Satan himself had given him a dozen paper cuts and then pissed in them.
Which brought him back to his current problem. With no houses or towns or cities or whackjobs, there were no leftovers to scoop up, at least not many. He had found sad little piles of supplies as he wandered, even out here, either dropped by accident or next to whoever had owned them when they died, or just abandoned by some poor soul who couldn't carry them any further. Even these had dried up eventually, and he had exhausted the surrounding area in multiple sweeps, searching for anything useful and different places to sleep. He supposed eventually, he might find people willing to trade, but right now everyone would be too savage to risk bartering off anything that might be needed. It was easier to just kill them and take it, which was another reason he was out here. He hadn't done that yet, and didn't want to reach the point where he would. Gerry thought that if he fell that far, that would be the point he would finally french his pistol, cripple the proverbial camel, his last straw.
Ironically, the government that had been so instrumental in putting him in this horrific position, seemingly designed to obliterate every part of him, body and soul, was also the one that had made it possible to keep going. His trunk and his home had been stocked with all the necessary supplies a capitalist economy and government surplus could offer. Bottles of water, high count ones of Rad-X, fat and luxy bags of blood and Rad-Away, shiny Stimpaks and soothing Med-X. Mentats(he had had all four flavours to begin with, thank you very much, the Space Museum having given away promotional extras to staff across the board), and Buffout were in there as well, not something that was standard in the emergency preparedness booklets, but then he had always believed in being ready for anything. Which was probably the reason he had had anything at all. Years of useless duck-and-cover drills and unending reports of the threat of nuclear action had worn everyone to the point of indifference, but not Gerry, not with his ear on the inside. He had stocked enough for nine, three thrice, just in case, everything in a solid, dependable hiking pack, which had kept him from falling out of that damned dependable palmetto. He threw his last pebble. No cheering.
"Good old, dependable Gerry. Only good for yourself. Nobody else."
He was down to his last few bags and bottles. He needed to venture out of the small valley, his little escapist port in the storm. Looking around, he stopped short halfway through the motion of scanning the area again, cursing and digging a finger into his ear. On top of everything else, just icing on the irradiated cake, he was starting to suffer from one of those many indignities of old male age; there was hair starting to grow in his ears, it itched, and he didn't think the woods were going to cough up a pair of tweezers anytime soon to let him take care of the wiry little buggers. It was somehow the loudest argument his mind could kick up towards venturing back into a town somewhere, death by radiation or whackjob coming in second to elderly hirsute agony. If his nose hairs decided to follow in solidarity and turn his nostrils into push brooms, Gerry thought he might go nuts.
"At least that would be a short trip. Need to take a short trip off a long pier. Need to take a trip off this rock first, though. Short trip, long sleep. God willing, let it be the one that doesn't end, amen."
Gerry entertained the thought that he might already be nuts. Standing up with a groan and various joint-produced pops as the rotten yolk of the sun touched the horizon, he grabbed the Cram can, dumped the pebbles into a rag to muffle any noise they might make after picking up any that had missed(it had taken him forever to find the perfect little round ones that he liked to play with, and he was childishly, heartbreakingly attached to them), and jammed both into the pocket of his army jacket. Picking up his tattered pack, the outside festooned with bundles of rags and clothes, anything that looked drab enough to help him blend in, he moved down from the outcropping and back to the overhang he had found. Head twitching, eyes flicking all around, and his ears straining so hard he could hear his own blood roaring in them, Gerry undid his bundles, pulled a few brushy deadfalls he had picked up along the way for this purpose in front of himself, then yanked his dirty hood over his dirty face and shut his eyes, not wanting to see anything after night fell entirely.
There still weren't any stars, except for the ones he dreamed of.