I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

There wasn't a day that I didn't repeat that passage to myself ten times, sometimes more. Dad thought it was kind of counter-productive that I obsessed over that one line, completely without context, but I didn't really care. Those twenty seven words, those hundred and one letters, that one comma and two periods- they were the only tie I had to my mom. Shit, I couldn't even see her when I looked in the mirror- I just looked like a younger version of Dad, maybe a little taller.

Amata sort of stuck to me because of that, I think. The whole no-mom thing. That, and probably because I was the only guy her age who wasn't a complete asshole.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

Amata had a little pocket Bible she always carried around, a.. 'gift' from her father. As long as I can remember, she'd always had it on her, always mouthing out a passage or another, trying to think of the righteous and just thing to do for every situation. She was expecting to be the next Vault Overseer. Everyone expected her to be the next Vault Overseer. But I think she was guilty- even if she hid it damn well- of how harsh her father could be sometimes. She always did the right thing, even when she got nothing out of it. Something her father hated...

Something I admired.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

Now and again, I'd peek over her shoulder and try to read a line or two. But none of it seemed to stick. None of it, really, but Revelations 21:6.

Amata was horrified to learn that, obviously, and took to preaching as well as she could with that little Bible. She didn't have much success, though. I was still fighting with Butch as much as I always did and practicing with my BB gun whenever I could. But I tried my hardest, I really did. Just for her.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

She had helped me escape. She had put it all on the line. All for me. I would always owe her my life. Always.

"Him."

I blinked, wringing my grimy hands. "But... he has a kid-"

Jericho punched me in the side of the head- not roughly. If he hadn't been drunk, I'd probably have been knocked out. "Fuck. Jus' do it, kid."

From where we sat on the bottom step of the stairs, Jericho and I had a pretty good view of Moriarty's Saloon. Gob at the bar, Nova preening at her corner, Moriarty counting and double-counting caps back in his office. I recognized a few other faces in the dust and cigarette smoke- Lucy West, Sherriff Simms keeping the peace, some other settlers just passing through who I'd never see again- and my target.

Sitting alone at a table, his right hand fiddling with his empty glass, he looked deep in thought. Nova perked up from her usual spot and walked slowly, with the usual cocked hips, across the saloon. His head followed those hips closely.

Nova passed his table to put an elbow on the bar counter and chat with Gob, her ass put out almost expectantly.

"Now."

"Yer dead." Jericho swirled his vodka with the butt of his cigarette, not seeming to mind that his rust-colored fingernails were tainting his drink.

I grimaced. "You're kidding, right? He has one eye-"

Another punch, and this time I felt it. "Look at him, ya fuckin' stupid shit. Where's his holster?"

I looked again. And... his holster was on his left leg, Ruger Super Redhawk .44 sitting in it patiently. His left hand was on his thigh, surprisingly still compared to the right one.

"... Huh. On his left-"

"'Bout fuckin' time, kid. If you had drawn, he would'a had the advantage. You would'a had to turn your body, he wouldnt've." Jericho gulped down his vodka, dirt and all. A grudging respect had creeped into his gruff voice. "Fuck it, kid, you don't roll with caravans unless yer the best, and he did it with one eye. Ya dun fuck with him."

I looked again at Jimmy Creel, with a new understanding. A little shock ran through me when I realized he was looking at me, and not warmly- that left eye of his was sharp. Freakishly sharp.

"Now, we're gonna have anoth'a go. Ready?"

I sighed. It was training, but plotting to kill your neighbors was a really disturbing mental exercise.

I looked at it, and it looked at me.

It was amazing, really. In all the time I had been out of the Vault, I had seen nothing like this. Even the robot deputy outside the Megaton gate wasn't as mind-blowing as this.

Jenny Stahl, cleaning chipped glasses with a dirty scrap of rag and plenty of spit, leaned over her bar. "What'cha lookin' at, huh?"

I couldn't exactly find the words. It was just... something else.

"It... it..." I shook my head, my eyes wide and mouth hanging open. "It has two heads!"

"Oh, you mean the Brahmin? Yeah, it does." Stahl went back to cleaning glasses, rolling her eyes. "Really that interesting to you?"

But it was! Which head controlled the legs? Did each get a front and a back leg, or did each one have the front two or the back two? Did they see what the other head saw? Were the heads telepathic? Did it have one spine or two? How many stomachs? Four? Eight?

"If yer so interested, you can just cut it open to find out what's inside."

I looked back to the Brahmin, and it- they- were staring at me. And not in a friendly way. Maybe... dissection wasn't a great idea.

Those four horns were pretty sharp looking, after all.

Had to keep moving. That was the only thought going through my head. My leg muscles were screaming, threatening to lock up any second. My shoulder was burning, stinging, infected again- I could feel the cold pus running down my arm.

The Capitol Wasteland stretched before me, the same sand-choked skeleton of a landscape its been for the past two hundred years- all brutal canyons and sheer, jagged cliffs, with nothing but sand dunes dotted with sharp rocks in between. There weren't even any tumbleweeds out there- they had all burnt away under an uncaring sun. I squeezed my eyes shut against a strong gust of wind, fine dust clogging my mouth and nose. I coughed, my entire body spasming with exhaustion.

West. I had to keep going west. Into the sunset. If Talon Company suspected any deserters, they'd head west. Where I was going. But the western side of the Trough- or what used to be the Trough, now that the raider outpost had probably been blasted to rubble by then- had the most mines laid down. It was my best bet, and I occasionally heard a few explosions echoing in the distance.

But it was so hard to breath. My head hurt like all the pistol whips and rifle butts I'd ever gotten were coming back all at once.

That son of a bitch.

That son of a fucking bitch.

I had to stop. My mouth was dry,tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, not enough water in me to sweat, fingers and toes without feeling. I had been walking for hours, and I couldn't go any longer. But I knew if I stopped... I wouldn't get up. So I kept going. With a shambling, foot-dragging walk, I kept going.

Jim had known. He had known those Talon Company mercs were coming, and he knew how strong they were, not only in number, but in bloodlust. He had known, at let his men go one by one into the grinder.

Then why did he recruit me? Waste a hundred good caps? What could one more gun have done? I hadn't done anything to even out that slaughter.

I just shook my head. Maybe he really was insane. Maybe he thought he could've won.

No... Jim wasn't stupid. A fucking maniac, but not stupid. Maybe... he had just wanted a fight.

I winced, and not from staring into the setting sun for so long. That was it. Jim had called himself washed up... and wanted to go out with a bang. He had wanted not just an onslaught, but a fucking slaughter. That was how every raider wanted to go out- bloody. Jericho had told me that.

I couldn't take it. I threw up- but threw up nothing. I hadn't eaten in a while, rations being so low back at Jim's outpost; they didn't see me as that important, after all. So I just hacked up some thin, gritty spit, my throat crushing in on itself. My steps became even more staggering.

Why. Why did I leave the Vault? Why did I throw it all away? The things I had completely taken for granted- food, water, a safe place to sleep, people who wouldn't help me one moment and cannibalize me the next- were gone, now. Gone forever. The only lead I had about Dad was that he had gone east- and that was it. That was all I had accomplished.

I felt an angry hotness building behind my eyes. For all the praise, having the best GOAT exam results, for all the promise... I was a fucking failure. The only one who was willing even hint at that was the Overseer- everyone else just let it go. Even Amata, my best damn friend, saw me as something great. If only she knew how wrong she was...

Almost falling sideways into a gaping rocky canyon, I put all those thoughts out of my head. They wouldn't get me anywhere, now. Besides, Jericho would call me a pussy for getting so pissed over what was out of my hands, now.

So I just stared into that big, sore red eye staring back at me, and stumbled west.

Finally.

This was it.

The sun had dipped below the toothy ridge of mountains to the west not long ago, but with the light left my will to live.

Looking for so long into the sun had messed with my eyes, leaving me almost blind in the evening slight. My sight was a horrible mash of greens and purples and oranges- colors I hadn't seen in a long time. It almost made me want to throw up again, but I knew I couldn't.

I was making my way down a steep slope, carelessly knocking rocks down as I went. They made long, ringing echoes as they rolled and bounced along the cliffside- if there was anyone around, they'd hear it. If there was anyone around, they'd kill me.

If that was the case, I couldn't have been happier. I had thrown away Jim's old M1 Garand hours ago, and with it all the .30-06 bullets. It was amazing- I felt so light without all that firepower. I still had his Colt 1911, but... I couldn't throw that away. My fingers needed something to hold onto, with my knife gone.

So close, now.

I had crawled up the sides of canyons and cliffs and tumbled down just as many. How I did it, right on the brink of death, I didn't know. My face stung with sunburn, my lips cracked and bleeding. I felt all those days of sitting in the cage at Paradise Falls coming back, those days of rotting away in the sun, surrounding by nothing but more decay. More hopelessness.

But now, I was done. My fingernails ripped and bleeding, my throat ragged with gasping and coughing on dusty air, I was done.

It felt good, being able to give up. No one would blame it. It was too hard. It was beyond anything anyone back at the Vault could've done. It was good enough. I sure wasn't proud of myself, but shit, at that point, any sort of death was good enough.

But even with that defeatist attitude, I had to have it be a little memorable. Like in the movies. Just flopping over and dying wouldn't do. So I decided- the next slightly interesting thing I came across, I'd die next to. So if someone found my shriveled and withered body, picked clean by molerats, someone would say, "He tried."

So I walked. Made it to the bottom of that last cliff, and walked. The sand beneath my feet felt more solid now, less like it was trying to suck me in and smother me then and there. Now that I had a goal- even if that goal was a not completely pitiful death- it seemed easier to walk. Just a little bit.

So I walked. I'm not sure for how long. What was another ten minutes? Fuck, what was another hour? I had ran my ass off from that Talon vs. raider killing floor for so long time seemed meaningless now. So I walked.

Eventually, the sky darkened even more, and I knew it was time. Day in the Wasteland was dangerous enough, but night... was something different. That's when the really fucked up things came out to play. The ones that go bump in the night. And by bump, I mean fucking kill you so hard you wouldn't recognize yourself.

The sand ended, and a rocky, rough kind of plain begun. I barely noticed, probably wouldn't have if I hadn't hit it headfirst. I laid there for a second, wondering how I had gotten from standing up to the ground so quickly, when I noticed a fence behind me. A wooden fence. Huh. I must've just fallen over it like a sleepwalking dumbass. I wasn't surprised.

But something else in the darkness caught my eye. Dying next to a fence wouldn't be so bad- someone would find some deep, mysterious meaning in it, I guess- but I could probably do better. So I got to my feet- and fell over.

Okay. No more walking. So I crawled over a little ways, my bloody knees barely feeling the rocky dirt, and before I knew it, I had bumped heads with the one thing I thought I'd never see again.

A Brahmin.

It looked at me, and I looked at it... them. Those four eyes stared right through my soul- but at that point, there probably wasn't much to see. Just an emaciated, empty-eyed fuck who had had it all- except for common sense.

That was good enough. Dying next to a mutant cow thing. What the fuck else was there? My arms had given out anyways, so there I lay next to the Brahmin, staring up into a starless black sky.

I closed my eyes and died. There were worse ways to go.