A Loud Thump

" Make a habit of two things: to help; or to do no harm."

- Hippocrates

I never thought I'd ever sleep on the floor before, and I got to admit, it isn't as bad as it sounds. The sleeping bag wasn't as nice or soft and fluffy as a bed in the vault but it definitely let me have my few hours of sleep. I opened my eyes, and first thing I noticed was that the room was strangely... Alot brighter. I got up to my feet, and took a quick look into my bag.

Still have my inventory. medkits, water, food rations, ammunition, a spare white tee shirt and my newly found Nuka-Cola. Everything is in place. I walked out to the hallway, peeking my head out the door. The house seems clear, I walked to the bathroom of the house. A good crack seen from the bottom of the mirror straight to the top with it's veins spread around it, but I was still able to see my reflection with a good portion of the mirror that was undamaged.

My uniform was all covered in earth from the times I fell because of my clumsiness of this new terrain. I removed my vest, it too, was dirty. Turning the valves of the sink did no good giving me water, I pulled out my water and poured a bit into my cupped hand, and rinsed my face in it.

The whole house seemed brighter, I know it was day, but what made this so much brighter? Here I thought the moon was bright. In the vault, our lighting system gives us a "Day and Night" cycle. looking out the dirt stained window in the bathroom, showed rays of light. I shrugged off the thought, and began downstairs. I had to move the broken glass which caused a lot of noise, but I don't think anyone is around to notice. I searched the entire house one more time, under the fridge, I found what appears to be a magazine. It read "Locksmith's reader" a quick skim of the book showed me a little baggie inside with a few paper clips and bobby pins; and that all of the pages were present with detailed diagrams of locks. This book may be useful, or at least something to read out of boredom, I stored the magazine into my pack and headed towards the front door.

Now everything was even brighter! as soon as I opened the door the rays of light became bigger and soon consumed the room around me and my eyes. I thought I went blind! I quickly turned away from the door, and shielded my eyes, pressing my eyelids with my fingers. I reopened my eyes, all I can see is blurriness, I kept on blinking until it wore off.

After I recovered from the temporary blindness. I looked towards the door, with one hand, I cupped my forehead to shield my eyes of this unbearable light. I took a few steps outside, the blurriness came back, but after a while it began to fade and my eyes began to focus again.

I took a look at my Pipboy, it's about 9am in the morning. So this is what morning was? I thought the morning light in the Vault was bright, but this? This is intense! Now that my eyes were adjusted, I took a look around my surroundings. Everything was much more clearer to see now, I can now see from a farther distance. I looked up once again noticing that the dark blue sky has now turned into a new livid color. The yellowish clouds still covered much of the sky. Suddenly my eyes began to flinch again from a great brightness, I found the light's source. From that glimpse moment I stared at it, it was like the moon! only not like a rock in the sky, but more like a constant spark.

I took my mind off the spark, and walked down the road heading south. After a while I saw what appeared to be the town (more like village) centre. It was a few roads intersecting with a parking lot for a cluster of buildings including a town hall, a few stores and restaurants. I stopped by the town hall for a quick snack. I opened my backpack, grabbed a granola bar and began to get a few bites of it with a few sips of water.

I wouldn't say my belly was full after this meal, but it was enough to get me through the day. I brought enough food with me to last about 2 weeks. Sooner or later I'm going to have to find a food source in order to survive.

Most of the building's were boarded up with wooden planks and other garbage, so searching those buildings are a no go. The map on my PipBoy showed that the town of Barre had several routes going in different directions. A route going southeast heads directly toward worcester, route 122 was what it was called.

While I was walking southeast I noticed there were more tanks, some of them were blown to large metal chunks. Hmm. That meant before the bombs fell, there was actual ground war that happened here. The tanks were so faded and rusty, I couldn't tell what tanks were enemies or not. All insignias and painted flags are all faded away. One of the tanks looked like it was rammed into a shop, it left me an open entrance to the building.

The building was small, a room with a counter and a back room. Oh and a tank. Whatever that was in the room is now destroyed because of this tank, that didn't stop me from looking around. I looked behind the counter, empty, I walked to a corridor behind the counter that leads to another door. I tried opening the door but it was locked, I was certain this was the back room. For a moment, I struggled with the door, trying to kick it down and considering to simply shoot the door lock with my shotgun, but then I realized something. The door's lock looked very similar to the ones in the Locksmith's Reader magazine.

I sat down, and began reading the magazine. "The pin-and-tumbler lock consists of a cylinder that can rotate within its housing (see the illustrations below). When locked, the cylinder is kept in place by several pairs of pins." I began to understand how the locks work. In order to unlock it, I need to use my bobby pin to push up specific pins, while using a paper clip like a wrench to turn the cylinder in order to unlock it.

The whole process required patience, luckily the little baggie inside that magazine supplied me with about 20 bobby pins and 3 paper clips. I did in fact made mistakes, I broken at least 4 different bobby pins before I finally got that glorious clicking noise given to me by the lock. I opened the door to see if the whole act was worth it. The back room revealed itself as a storage room, the shelves had several boxes and cans of different food. Oh god. was this the "food source" I need to rely on to survive? It may as well be. I took a look at the canned foods, they had canned peaches, pineapples, tomato paste, and green peas. I took several cans, but I didn't want too many that it will slow me down. I now had 4 weeks worth of food if I rationed it carefully, or have 3 meals a day for 3 weeks. I was half excited about the canned meals I found, expecting it to be rather nasty, but knowing it will be life sustaining. I left all the boxed foods alone.

The room had many shelves, but one of them was moved out of place. A closer look showed there was a safe hidden behind it. I pushed the shelf away to better show the safe, It had the same kind of lock as the door. Surely because it's a safe, this would be harder, but I am determined to unlock this safe. I might have spent little over an hour on this lock, but after 4 broken pins I finally heard that click sound again.

I opened the safe and long and behold, the reward isn't food! Inside it had a brown leather box and a holotape with a recorded message.

"Hey S. I know you don't believe in violence, but that shit is gonna bite you in the ass if you don't carry one of these around. Everything is going to shit man, and it isn't going away.

You heard what happened in Los Angeles?

The MPs fucking shot up everyone in that protest to bits! I bet the same fucking deal is gonna happen in Boston, and when it does, everyone will be leaving the state. More people will be driving this way, what does that mean?

More business? Fuck no, anarchy will tear this place apart. Shit will go down and I want you to run away with this, keep your wife and kids safe and get the fuck out of here while you still can."

What the hell was happening around here? I wished I could know more. I installed the Holotape data into my PipBoy incase I wanted to hear it again. I picked up the box and opened it. Inside was a stack of paper currency that looked very similar to our ration credits in the Vault, I assumed this was money for this world so I stored it into my bag.

So this is what that holotape recorder wanted to give. A clean, unused pistol of some kind. It looked quite different from my 10 millimeter pistol. It isn't as bulky, and it's Iron sights were glowing green. I picked up the pistol, it was very much lighter than the 10m. I took a look at the slugs, the bullets were different. The slugs read "9 millimeter" meaning it used a different kind of ammo. I stored the gun into my bag along with the slugs of ammo it came, should I run out of ammo for my 10m pistol or should it break apart, it'll be good to have a back up.

It was around midday when I left the store, I walked southeast to the route 122. According to the PipBoy, this route will take me directly to Worcester. This is good. This isn't hard yet, no obstacles in my way yet. It's nothing but me, a giant column of cars going forever, and a path to worcester.

There was no point in looking into the cars, they're all burnt to a crisp and were probably looted many times upside down.

After walking for about an hour, I saw a few figures in a distance. When I got a little closer, it was people! I counted four of them, three of them were armed and there was a fifth figure... It looked very strange, it had... Four legs? It's color had an orange tint and it had chests, and boxes tied on it's back.

Seeing them with weapons made me alert and nervous. I pulled my shotgun from my back and continued to walk toward the group, if they would shoot me, I will run to cover behind the cars. We were no more than a hundred yards from each other, they still had their weapons drawn, I was thinking about just stopping and wait for them to come for me. Suddenly I heard something loud, followed by a piercing pain in my ass.

BANG!

I quickly fell forward, wincing at the pain I was just given. I just got shot in the ass! I screamed out in pain, the bullet went straight through the left side of my ass out my right thigh. I don't think anything bad was hit, I tried moving myself to cover, then that sound came again.

BANG!

Cover was no longer on my mind, only pain and blood. I screamed out even louder, a bullet pierced my side. I quickly crawled beside an overturned car and tried to sit up.I couldn't move anywhere else now, I'm a sitting duck here. So much was going through my mind but was all ignored, instead my mind focused on the amount of blood I was losing and deciding whether my side or ass hurts more. I heard yelling and footsteps running. I'm done. I failed... What a shitty end huh? Not a full day after leaving my home and already got a bullet through my ass and side, bleeding out with more men with guns running for me.

Everything is... Going dark now...What's going on? I heard muffled yelling

"NAGE! What have you done!?

I lost so much blood and began to feel very woozy, I slowly leaned to the side...

Then I went deaf, soon after I went blind... and finally I went to sleep.

Thump.