Chapter 1 - A house in Komárom
5. 24. 2279.
I walked into a house in Komárom, at least before the war.
Everything was full of dust and cobwebs. Likely no one was in this house for at least 200 years.
I went into the kitchen to the right, where I immediately saw a few Felvidéki Konzerv Kukoricas on the ground. I walked there and picked it up, to look at it better if it is spoiled or it is still edible.
It looked like it didn't have any problems, so I put it in my backpack with a few other.
From outside I heard a loud screaming and I instantly stood up and drew my weapon. Originally an 8mm HKP 68/D, one of the best pre-war carbines, but I upgraded it so much, that it is almost unrecognizable.
I quietly walked to the window, and peeked out in a little hole where it wasn't moldy... But I didn't see anything or anyone.
I silently walked across the kitchen to the other window, and I looked out there too. But I didn't saw anything either.
Then again I heard something, and now I was able to tell that it was a ghouls voice, and from the sounds of it, it had just walked into the house. So I quickly hid behind the door.
About half a minute later it walked into the kitchen, and I was able to hear another from the anteroom.
I waited until it walked to the other side of the kitchen, and right when it turned around, I jumped out and put ten bullets in its head, of which its quarter would have been enough, but let's be sure.
The ghoul immediately froze and quickly collapsed to the floor, but the other ran into the kitchen too. And then I heard the screaming of a few other ghouls from the house's garden.
The one that came in, slid through the tiled floor, already dead.
I was able to hear, that around four more ghouls started running outside, so I quickly threw a frag grenade in the anteroom, and I took cover behind one of the walls.
The ghouls became louder, but the grenade exploded, and everything went quiet.
I waited a little bit, but it was still quiet, so I slowly peeked out from behind the door and I saw that six ghouls were laying there. At least six heads, they weren't really in one piece, so I couldn't really determine how many ghouls were there.
"I suppose I'm done with this" I said to myself satisfied, and I started searching the ghoul bodies, if they had something interesting or useful, but I didn't find anything.
I rather continued my exploring of the house and went into the once living room.
The living room was big and luxurious, if you don't count the 200 years of dust, mold and cobweb.
Leaned to the left wall was a guitar, that maybe once was at many places but after the war, it became quite rare, and even rarer who can actually play it. Which was a pity, because it was really nice listening to real music, not listening to it from a 200 years old radio. But when the Soviet Union broke up, and got replaced by the deadly Pannonia(n Post-War Region), the arts basically disappeared and only a very few people could play on any instruments.
I learned a little to play on piano. One time I even got myself a piano, but a raider blew it up... and then I wasn't even able to sell it.
The most who can play instruments comes from bunkers, or as they call it to the west, the Vaults. But the Hungarian Autonomous People's Republic wasn't economically in the best situation when the bombs fell, so only one was built 12 km to the west of the capital city, Budapest. The MB Bunker's still got 150 residents, but it is decreasing, year by year, because originally it was designed to room 520 people. But they never come out, and even if they do, you say anything to them, and they'll shoot at you. So, they're not the nicest people around here.
The bunker dwellers coming from the Soviet Union were lot nicer though. Maybe because they constantly maintained their relations with the wasteland.
They didn't want to shoot you at sight, but they even traded some weapons with us. The only problem was that they wanted to contact the MB Bunker residents, who immediately fired at them, and half of the Russians died. The remaining survivors went back to the east, and we didn't see them since.
Aaaand I notices that I spaced out again... All this because of one guitar.
'I should stop doing this' I thought, then grabbed the guitar, took it in my hands and I strummed the strings.
It sounded perfect, so I started to try out all the strings one by one. In which I wasn't very good, since I couldn't play on guitar.
"I hit the jackpot" I said to myself, after hearing the near perfect sounding guitar.
I started thinking about how much would they give for a perfect guitar, because I once sold a guitar, and that had terrible sounds compared to this.
I hope I'll get a 1000 pengős for this, because I easily sold that guitar once for 600 pengős, and it had so bad sounding compared to this. But this... this is perfect, almost everything of it.
A little dusty, but no scratches, and somehow a perfect sounding.
I quickly put it on my back and continued my scavenging.
...
Downstairs was nothing interesting other than that guitar, so I went up.
The 200 years old stairs creaked under my heavy armor, but I made it up without any accidents, and there I was greeted by a long hallway. Right in front of me was a door, to the right were 3 other doors, one to the right, one to the left and one at the end. To the left in the hallway were 2 more doors, one to the right and another at the end of the hallway.
First I looked into the room in front of me... it was a normal office room. On the table was a terminal, but broken, and on the walls were shelves, with many papers and folders on them.
I took out one file and read its title.
'European Defense Pact' I read, and in the corner of the paper a red 'Top Secret' label.
Because of the top secret label, it interested me, so I opened it and read into it.
'Because if the Sino-American War would get worse not only they, but Europe would regret it too, from 31 European leaders 28 agreed, that they will create a defense pact. With this they want to ensure, that if Europe gets attacked, we could defend ourselves. And it would also benefit in the research of technology.' I read the first few lines, and I looked for a date, then in the corner of the paper I saw the date: '8. 4. 2074.'
In three years they didn't achieve anything as I see, because Europe is in ruins, just like the USA, China or the USSR.
I started turning the pages quickly, and I saw a graph about something, so I started to slowly turn the pages back.
Soon I found it, and it was a graph about which countries has accepted and which didn't the pact.
'Emergency Government of London / Didn't accept / London trusts America that they will protect them if the event that seems so close would come'
'Swiss Confederation / Didn't accept / The long ago acting neutrality politics collides with the motives of the pact, so they declined'
'Republic of Sicily / Didn't accept / The political situation in their country didn't allow them to participate in such things'
'Interesting reasons' I thought. I took out another file with the label 'Collection of Political Bloopers'.
I just stared at the cover... What does a file like this doing here, and in hopes that I would find out, I opened it.
'I will collect the records in this file of when politicians had a funny or embarrassing moment' And under it was another writing, which was written unreadable, but with a lot of effort I was able to read it 'Géza Bognár, the listener'.
...
I looked into a few other files, and I determined that Géza Bognár was a veteran radio decoder/listener, and even after his retirement. he liked his job. So much, that he even kept files on it, a lot actually.
After I thought I saw all the interesting ones, I put all back to their places, then I went to the room on the left, which was a regular pre-war bedroom, with a double bed, nothing interesting. Except it was well maintained.
The room in front of me now was probably a kids room, because it had a small bunk bed. But also nothing interesting.
And the door at the end was only a bathroom.
I walked to the other side of the hallway, where I walked into the room to my right. As I stepped inside, I immediately saw the working terminal, so I sat down.
The password was quite easy to guess, 'listener'.
When it loaded in, I saw two folders. One of it was named 'Work', and the other 'Journal'.
I clicked on the journal.
127 files loaded in, all with different dates. The first was named '2072- First entry'. Unfortunately, the first ones weren't named like that I could see when were these written, but a little later who wrote this started naming with the date, and so I could see that there was an entry every 5- 10 days. But there was a gap, between '10. 18. 2077.- Situation report', and the '1. 6. 2078.- We survived, but at what cost' files. And the last file had the name '5. 21. 2078.- We're leaving'.
I opened the first one and started reading it.
'This would be my first journal entry. I don't know what I will be writing in these, but will only the more important ones, like if Géza hears something interesting.' I started to think... If the owner of this terminal talks in second person about Géza, than most likely this wasn't Géza's terminal. Because it was starting to pique my interest, I continued reading it.
'Yesterday in work my boss asked me a few questions, and I think I'm near a promotion. And two days ago Géza listened to the army's station at Debrecen, and he heard a few things.'
'When we got married, he said he will listen a lot to the military's radio, if the end comes, then he could at least try to save us. But I think now he only listens to the army by pure enjoyment.' So, the terminal was his wife's.
'I'll write an entry every few days or weeks' And it didn't go any further, so I quit the file and clicked on the second with the name '2072- Second entry.'
...
I've read a few, but the most interesting ones were the ones near the end, like the '3. 14. 2077.- Political Problems', in which Katalin Bognár writes that his husband eavesdropped the meeting of the 104 region leaders and the general secretary, about dsicussing the building of more bunkers, anti-air weapons, anti-nuclear rockets and the ICBM silos that would be built on the far east. But the leader of the Kamchatkan Region wasn't willing to agree the building of more than 50 silos in the region. The shouting got so intense, that the leader of the Kamchatkan Region got arrested, and most likely by tonight there will already be another leader of the region.
'5. 1. 2077.- Labor Day' also piqued my interest, which I knew why it had this name. It has this name because they had a pre-war holiday, when they didn't work. And in Moscow the leaders of the Soviet Union held a meeting every year to discuss the next years budget.
In the 2077 meeting they talked about more anti-air, and more silos. But they also talked about the idea of a nation-wide entertainment services expansion, according to which they would have built more cinemas, beaches, ski resorts, parks and more television, terminal and radio production facilities. And I was also surprised by the idea of a orbital nuke launcher, to which they agreed, and would have been done with it by 2083.
But the most interesting was building more bunkers, in which was three more bunkers on Hungarian lands.
A few weeks later Katalin wrote about that they already started building one of the bunkers, just west to Debrecen, a place hidden by the nature.
This made me very excited, and I quickly wrote a reminder on my PorTer, which was a terminal designed to be carried on my hand.
The Americans made the first Pip-Boy way before the war. Then the Russians stole the blueprints to it and started creating their own. The Russian one wasn't able to compete with its American competitor, and it neither was mass produced because of the nukes.
PorTer is short for Portetivniy Terminal in Russian, which is means portable terminal.
I got one when a few Russian raiders came into Pannonia from the east, and there was a pretty big fire fight between them and me and a few other comrades of mine.
No raider survived and we split up the reward between us, and when I saw PorTer on a raiders hand, I immediately recognized it and claimed it.
The American Pip-Boys can do a lot of things. They've got a radio, a light, a Gieger counter, it somehow keeps track of the users inventory, have maps, monitors the wearers health and it can play holotapes. But most importantly Pip-Boys have a function, that warns you if something aggressive is near you, and it has the VATS.
The PorTer can't do so much but is still very good. It's got a radio, a Geiger counter, it can also keep track of my inventory, although sometimes incorrectly, also has maps, it also shows my healt status and it can play holotapes too. It can also warn you of something aggressive but has closer range, and sometimes misjudges, but unfortunately the PorTer hasn't got anything like VATS.
Later in Minsk I discovered that only around 250 PorTers were made, and half of that is most likely already broken or in pieces. In London a Pip-Boy mechanic looked into it, and repaired a few things in it that was broken, like the radio was completely ruined. After that I was able to listen to some good music, and I didn't have to carry a radio in my backpack, it only took away space... I tried it once.
And because in London I learned English, in Rostov Russian, in Berlin in German very good and in Paris I learned French a little, I was able to understand the non-Hungarian radio stations too. Which I could listen to, with the help of the PERSA. The PERSA is short for Pan-European Radio Signal Amplifier, was the result of the cooperation of the European radio stations. The PERSA created a continent-wide radio network, that strengthens all the radio signals around the continent. Well in Russia the English radio signal are weaker, but here in Central Europe, all the signals are strong.
Recently on one of the English radio I heard that around two years ago in America there was a vault dweller, who left Vault 101, where they still run an experiment to see what would happen if they put a dictatorial overseer as head of a Vault, and he would get the command to never open the Vault.
The vault dweller escaped after his father, and he did many good things, in a nutshell. The biggest was that they created a machine, that cleared the water of a basin from radioactivity, but it cost his father's life.
In America they did experiments in all of the Vaults, in everyone a different kind of experiment. I remember that they said there was one where everyone lived in a virtual world, in another they let out psychoactive drugs into the ventilation, and so every resident went insane. And there was also one where they locked up 1000 women and one man and vice versa 1000 men with one woman.
Man... these Americans were complete idiots.
The bunkers here were built to survive the nuclear retaliation, and when they think that Pannonia is ready, they recolonize it. I think that time is still not here.
But I noticed that I spaced out once again.
I continued reading the files. Most were pretty short, only rarely were longer ones.
I finally reached '10. 18. 2077.- Situation report', nothing interesting was in it, but if they would've know that the world would end existing as they knew five days later.
I opened the file named '1. 6. 2078.- We survived, but at what cost', and I started reading it.
'The last entry was a while ago. That is because many things happened not long after the last entry. Namely they blew up the world, and we were sleeping at the time, because of that Géza couldn't alert us. Not like we could've done anything. But the point is, all four of us have changed into weird creatures, like zombies.' I immediately knew she meant ghouls. But I couldn't understand how did they became ghouls if the closest bomb exploded above Budapest and Bratislava. Waiting for the answer I continued reading.
'It happened like this. On 21st, we went to Budapest for a short vacation, and we stayed in a hotel in the suburbs of Budapest.' This answers why they became ghouls.
'We would've came home on 24th (How unlucky do you have to be!), but in the middle of the night we woke up to an ear-piercing boom, and the windows smashed in the whole building. We jumped out of the bed and ran to the kid's room, but right when I opened the door and stepped in, I blacked out. When I woke up in the morning, I was already like this, a zombie or something.' Interesting, I thought.
'Firs twe tried to survive in the small apartment, but after three days Géza had to leave to find food, because we ran out of food.' They didn't know that the ghouls don't have to eat? Probably they didn't wait until they would have been starving, and they continued thinking they have to eat.
'The outside world was depressing to hear about by Géza when he came back. Our hotel was on a smaller hill, and from here we were able to see the entire city. The city that according to him was, because the entire downtown was completely obliterated, and where the parliament building was a few days ago, there was now a lake, created by the bombs crater. And he thinks we only survived because the bomb exploded somewhere above the parliament, and we were far away. So, we only became these zombie things.' They somehow figured out how intelligent ghouls are... well, created. Which was surprising, considering it happened right after the bombs fell.
'He said that he saw many people like us, but the more he went further into the city, as he said it, the more crazier they became.' Feral ghouls.
'He brought back food that would last around five days. Then we started thinking how would we get home. And four days later we started.' A really reckless move from them, considering, that only a few days ago was the world blown up, and everyone who had a gun would shoot them at sight, because they probably never saw ghouls before.
'We came home on foot, and while still in Budapest, we gathered more food, and then we headed towards Komárom. The journey took three days, but we successfully got home in Komárom. Since then, two months have passed, and we lived almost completely locked up. The most locals went away or didn't even come out of their house. One of our neighbors almost shot us, but we calmed him down that he doesn't have to be afraid of us, and he agreed to bring us food every three days.' Weird, it is rare that humans help ghouls, but maybe only because of the profile they built up to themselves in 200 years.
...
I've read the remaining ones too, they lived quite well for a few months, during which they calmed down the locals, and discovered that they don't get affected by radiation and they don't have to eat.
And finally, I reached the last, so I opened it.
'Yesterday we decided with Géza that we'll head east, where we will try to contact the Russian bunkers, because the MB Bunker was very aggressive on the radio when we contacted them. So today we prepare and tomorrow we depart.' MB Bunkers residents are more aggressive, that's for sure, but I didn't understand why they thought that the Russians would be more friendly, which they are though. And just like that, embark on such a long expedition, probably one or even two thousand kilometers and many years. But for them it didn't matter, because ghouls live for... well no one know how long, because they can live for 200 years that's for sure, but they still didn't know this.
This was the last entry, and it ended abruptly, without any form of completion.
I started thinking about what they could've done when they reached the Soviet Union. Maybe the Russians were so open-minded because of them.
But I remembered that I have to get back to the base before 7 o'clock. I stood up, walked out into the hallway and then turning right, I opened the last door.
It was a normal storage room. Nothing particularly interesting.
...
As I stepped out of the house, I wrote a reminder on my PorTer, to tell the scouts on the base to by all means, search through this house, because God knows what useful pre-war information lay here in those files, or that terminal if its hard drive is still retrievable. I looked on my map, clicked on the bases signal, then started walking towards Northwest.