I manage to spend the entirety of the otherwise quite short journey to Barnegat, barely paying attention to the Parkway around me, fiddling with the Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV. It's in seemingly mint condition, save for a few scratches here and there, and the fact that someone has carved little, blocky numbers 98 vertically into the dark tan Bakelite left of the screen. There are also little red splotches staining the device's underside – dried blood?
After running my hand over the glass-smooth surface for a good ten minutes, I start fiddling with the dial. I grope my way through the endless succession of electric green LCD menus. I manage to turn the light on and off. Then there are the number of menus labelled strange things like Inventory and Statistics which seem to be of no relevance to anyone living in a Vault, or really, anyone in general.
My stomach heaves a second later. My mind trails a second behind, as I realise that what I have - this must have been one of those special Pip-Boys then.
"Kenji," I look up, broadly smiling, breathing heavily, "I think this…I think this belonged to an adventurer once. It's got all these weird menus…you know the stories, yeah?"
"Oh?" Kenji tilts his head. "Yeah, yeah I do."
"Whose do you think this could have been?" I look down, mulling the shape of my Japanese shoes and the age-cracked asphalt of the road.
Vault 98…I knew no one from there. What was Vault 98, anyway? Toms River, yeah – they kept mostly to themselves, didn't they?
"Check the map?" Kenji suggests, peering over my shoulder.
"Right." Rubbing the dial, I manage to reach Map within seconds.
I am greeted by the electric-green outline of what seems to be…well, I stare it for a few minutes, to no avail. I don't know pre-War geography well enough at all.
"Philadelphia," Kenji says.
I scroll through the array of little square icons littering the map, seeing names like Bryn Mawr and West Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania and Levittown, places on the far side of the Delaware River in lands no New Jerseyan dares trod, in fear of becoming tomorrow's mutant feast.
There are some more familiar things – Vault 90, that's Timbuktu, right? And Camden – that makes me shudder a little. Mutants aside, no one goes to Camden and comes out alive. No one.
There doesn't seem to be a single reference to mutants. Perhaps, whoever's this had been had gone there in a time before the mutants had come?
For another matter, how did those guards in Manahawkin get it?
"Hey, Zoe, watch it," Kenji says, moments before I smash my face into a great dark mass.
I blink, and find myself sprawled on my back and elbows on the ground, staring up into a lamppost, on what seems to me a main street, not a derelict building in sight in the row of concrete-walled reclaimed shops. Kenji has his hand covering his mouth and giggles softly to himself. And I spin my head in a semicircle to see half a dozen others staring right at me.
"Well, fuck," I mutter under my breath. "Welcome to Barnegat."
Kenji picks me up and hauls me inside the nearest building. "Get inside, before you do that again," he says before I can protest. Not that I want to protest, already feeling my cheeks flush. "Though I must say," he chuckles softly, "it was terribly amusing."
"Piss off."
I stand up, taking stock of my surroundings. I'm in a dim, electric-lit room in what appears to be some kind of tavern. It's midday, so naturally, the place is empty, except for an old, scruffy woman standing behind the counter.
"Are you looking for the girl?" she asks, alternating angered glances between Kenji and me.
"Er…yes," I respond.
"She's not here," she snaps. "Get out."
"Er...what?"
I look her over. She's wearing leather armour – is she expecting someone? Are we that someone? And her surprisingly somewhat pale skin – she's definitely spent some time underground, then – is slightly orange-tinted – just like Paul and Andrew. Hm. I wondered if there was a coincidence there?
She pulls a shotgun from behind the bar and points it dead level at us. "Get out. I mean it. And stop looking. Now. Unless you want to disappear forever."
"What the fuck was she on about?" I ask, more to myself to Kenji, as we stumble back outside. I raise my Pip-Boy arm to above my eyes to stop the high noon sunlight from almost blinding me.
"I don't know," Kenji shrugs. "Maybe it was me."
I place my hand over his. "It wasn't you," I reassure.
"Are you sure?" he asks.
"Yes. She knew someone was coming. The way she was prepared like that…she's definitely involved with them. But how?"
"Right." Kenji stops by the edge of the pavement. There is an outlet of pre-War chain Radaburger across the street, which seems to have been reopened – at least if the lit neon sign is any indication. There are a few street criers here and about, advertising repairs, and even a casino down in Long Beach. And someone announcing that a caravan from heading from Atlantic City has just arrived in town.
"So," I exhale. "The letter said…she'd last been seen by the soldiers at the town hall…so let's start there?"
The town hall had been a little pre-War chapel, and according to instructions from a passerby, getting there requires us to cross back on a remarkably sturdy bridge over the Parkway. It is a rather unimpressive wood-panelled building sheltered behind a mass of trees – yeah, actual trees, just like the endless rows of them lining the sides of the Parkway, and lush grass, greener than Kenji's eyes – and as I look around, the radiation seems to have almost intensified nature's bright green here, rather than diminishing it to a ruined tan.
"You live in a garden," Kenji had told me once. "I remember Pennsylvania. It really is a wasteland. There's not a living thing in sight, except for mutants and mutants everywhere. When you're surrounded by nothing but faded hues of grey and tan and brown, your life is hopeless. But the moment I crossed the river and set food in New Jersey…" He sighed. "I knew this place was different."
Under the green-and-yellow banner of the Republic, flying from a spire atop the church, there stands precisely no one in front of the door. Something has been drawn shut on the other side of the windows.
"Hm," Kenji says, kicking at the ground. "Shouldn't there be someone here? Did something get them?"
"They might be inside," I suggest, and slowly, push open the creaky wooden door, into a dark interior.
I use my new Pip-Boy's light for the first time, bathing the interior in a sea of pale white. I want to smile at the near complete serenity of lighting a near. The air is clean – this building had been used recently. So why was it empty? There should have been at least someone here.
Kenji immediately gasps.
Within a second, I realise why. On the floor, by the door, lie sprawled a pair of bodies, both in Republic Army uniforms. One is a young, red-headed woman, and the other a dark-skinned young man. A single ragged bullet hole adorns of each their torsos. They can't have died that long ago, or someone would have discovered them by now.
"I think…these were the guards we were looking for," I put my hand to my mouth. I glance at Kenji, who looks like he's about to puke.
I hear raspy breathing. I hold my breath, and kneel. I see the man's chest rising erratically, almost tentatively.
"Kenji, go get help," I say, rather automatically. "He's still alive. If we get him to a medic now, I think he'll live."
The man regains consciousness not long after nightfall, in a Republic Army medical tent, located just off the Parkway in what had once been a car park. It's not much, but with the Autodoc they had, the army doctors – at least, I think that's what they were – had been able to extract the bullet – fortunately, it hadn't hit anything crucial, and the damage had been from. Meanwhile, Kenji, I, and a couple others had watched from the electric-lit bedside. I'm not entirely sure why the Army allowed us to stay, but I guess they'd been grateful we'd helped them recover one of their own.
If this – whatever this was – had happened to me, I'd have fully expected to die. I breathed a silent thank you in relief to whoever might have been looking out for us.
This man's name, it turns out, is Irving. After getting over the initial shock of realising he'd be attending his partner's funeral – Bethany, her name had been – he seemed to ultimately take the news with some level of resigned acceptance. I'd wondered what Bethany's story had been - where she'd come from, who her family had been, what she'd wanted to do in life. And with a tinge of sadness, I'd realised I'd never know.
I'd stopped myself then. I was on a job, and I couldn't do that.
Anyway, Irving had been from Long Beach, born and raised, and had been stationed in Barnegat on patrol duties for the last three months. Ever since the Barnegat local militia had been disbanded after a mutiny over a pay dispute three years ago, he'd explained to me, the Republic Army had been handling policing duties here. It had been necessary, too; the town back then had been under constant attack by wildlife from the Barrens just outside, but the Army had solved that problem.
So there he'd been, guarding the town hall and the mayor alongside Bethany, and then they'd come.
They had been four in leather armour, two young men and one young woman, armed with rifles – and another one, a scragglier-looking older man with what seemed to be a plasma weapon of some kind. They'd also all had notably orange-tinted skin, and had demanded to see the mayor.
They'd corralled Bethany and him inside, and shut the curtains to block out the outside sunlight, using little portable lights – that seemed identical to mine – for reasons Irving couldn't quite comprehend. The older man and the young woman had gone further in, while the other two had lined Bethany and him against the wall and shot them.
Irving hadn't died immediately. He'd played dead instead, steadily losing consciousness from the blood loss. But, just on the brink of passing out, he'd heard where they'd been going.
"I remember it clearly. I heard the mayor ask what they wanted. And then the woman saying, 'Shut the fuck up,' and then something about not having time to waste – and then, 'Come on, now back to Forked River.'"