Chapter 1: Out With Your Skin
Light – A sickly pale light – poured in from the nearby window harbored in a nearby wall made of flagstone. The light, as dull as it may be, cast enough light on the floor to show a hole in the floor for which light entered, but could never escape. Hard concrete, covered in a thick layer of dust which laid undisturbed for decades – centuries, even – was about to be tread upon by a mysterious visitor.
An arm emerged from the darkness of the hole; The arm clad in a blue sleeve. Another arm broke the darkness of the event horizon of the hole, a metallic device clad to it's wrist. After splaying across the floor, the forearms tensed, bringing about for a moment a man wearing a red Pre-War hat and thick, black-framed glasses. After a second being above the threshold of the hole in the floor, the man dropped back below into the dark recesses of the opening in the floor.
"Goddamnit," was heard softly from the opening in the floor as the arms tensed again, much harder than before finally allowing their owner to pull himself above the floor enough to sit on the edge of the opening and catch his breath.
"I shouldn't have eaten all those Fancy Lad's." After another few seconds, the man scooted his legs to the side of the hole and stood up. He was a tall, heavyset man dressed in a one-piece jumpsuit matching the same blue color his arms did. The suit was accented by a large yellow set of stripes on the front of his suit, the number "53" in yellow on his right collar, and another much larger "53" on his back, also in yellow. The only thing that seemed out of place for him was a black messenger bag with "RobCo" embroidered on it that hung from his shoulder, and the red boot-like sneakers on his feet.
The man looked around at his surroundings and surveyed for danger. Being in this strange new place was enough to unnerve him as it was, but the fact he was running from something not more than maybe 20 minutes before had his senses even more heightened than they should be, being in his situation. He looked back to the hole after looking around and let out a heavy sigh, "Looks like this is it."
He walked around the massive building, dust and rubble covering everything within the walls still standing. Bodies – Or skeletons, rather – lined the halls indicating there were people still there when the bombs dropped. Death lined these halls.
There was a chill in the air. He finally noticed the breath coming from his mouth was turning to steam. "Good God!" he exclaimed, "It's like walking into a freezer out here!" After wandering around, he found a storeroom filled with more dead bodies, "Poor guys. Must've run in here when the war started."
After grave-robbing a leather jacket from one of the skeletons, he grabbed food and water from the shelves and shoved them into his messenger bag. As he turned to walk out, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye...
Nuka Cola. Lots and lots of Nuka Cola.
There were cases upon cases stacked up in the corner of the room buried under all the fallen debris of the ceiling. Removing the debris, he found some of the bottles had broken open and their contents had long since dried up, but he managed to pull 20 full bottles out of the stack and placed them in his bag.
"Man, this thing is getting heavy." He dropped the bag and shook his hand a bit. Walking back to the hallway a moment and looking around some more, he found a skeleton that was smaller than the others with a backpack. Upon grabbing the backpack he looked at the contents inside. There were books inside. Inside was a notebook between the pages which he took out and read. It took a moment, but it dawned on him. "Holy Mary Mother of Christ. Where the hell am I?" He moved some of the contents of the bag to the backpack and placed both of them on his person before setting out to explore more.
He found himself walking down a large hallway with steel grated floors, its walls lined with barred limestone cells. Parts of the building had crumbled from a combination of elements and time, allowing some of the said elements in. Snow lined the floor from the opening in the wall, a cold draft following the flakes as they descended from the pale-lit sky.
"That would explain it," he said to no one, "it's freakin' winter." He knelt down to the snow on the ground and scraped some up, "I always heard about it, but I never thought I'd see it."
CRASH! He jumped to his feet at the sound, forgetting the snow in his hand. He felt his heart pounding hard and fast. It was pounding so hard, he could feel it in his ears. He quickly looked around and found a piece of steel bar from a cell door laying on the floor. He picked it up and readied it as he saw a shadow cast on the opposite wall. From around the corner came a very large, very hostile rat.
"Holy mother of God!" The rat sat for a moment, eyeing up his prey. The man in the blue suit held the rod slightly higher in anticipation. The rat attacked, charging toward him at... Well, not-so-average speeds. With a slightly confused yet ready look, as the rat approached the man – from his baseball-bat stance format – swiped the metal rod golf-club style into the rat's head.
The rod made contact and knocked the mutated animal back a bit. It quickly regained its senses and started to charge again, this time much, MUCH faster. The jumpsuited man didn't have enough time to ready himself again before the animal approached. The rat jumped into the air...
BOOM! A bright red flash flew out of the air behind him and made contact with the airborne rodent, instantly catching it on fire and burning it to cinders. The man fell to the ground and crawled on his back in terror until he hit something metal. Reaching behind him he felt something that was shaped like a leg right behind his head. He rolled over and looked up to find a robot holding one of its arms out, the palm smoking from its concealed cannons.
"Threat Neutralized," the robot said, its head dome flashing on each word's emphasis, "Returning to appointed rounds." The robot lowered its arm and turned around to walk away. The man quickly scrambled to his feet and called out to the robot, "Hey wait! Hold on a second!"
The robot stopped and turned to face the man, "Hello and welcome to the Old Joliet Prison, reinstated 2058," it said in a strange synthesized voice, "How can I help you today?" The man adjusted his glasses, "Priority Access, RobCo file 448108. Name, Location, Model."
The robot's dome flashed 3 times before responding, "Prison Guard Alpha Six, Joliet, Illinois, Great Midwest Commonwealth, Protectron Model 106."
"Instructions to building exit."
CLANG! The outside door shook slightly, reverberating the impact afflicted upon it. CLANG! Little by little the door swung out from its frame. CLANG! The blue jumpsuited man came flying out of the now flung open door and hit the ground.
"Ugh!" he moaned, picking his now removed glasses off the ground, "You'd think after 220 years, the damn door would rust away." The man got back to his feet and brushed the dirt and snow off his jacket then took a survey of the landscape. There was a faint rumble in the sky. He didn't like the look of it, so he lifted his left arm and looked at the attached device's screen. After a dial turn and a button press, he got a load of information, "Aw, shit. Looks like some kind of storm or something is headed this way. Gotta find shelter." The man walked.
And walked.
And walked.
It seemed like an eternity walking along the dead road in the town his previous home resided in came to a bend. He came about the bend in the road and passed a building that called itself the, "Joliet Central High School". Seeing he hadn't seen a soul since he left where he came from, he didn't think much of the place.
Well, until a gunshot was heard.
The man threw himself to the ground and covered his head. "The fuck was that?!" He turned over and looked to the front door of the building to see one person running out the door. Dressed in full face masks and goggles, decked head-to-toe in leather, the man ran up to the man on the ground and pointed his gun at him. Several others hung out of the school's windows as cover. In a very raspy voice, the man standing before him made his demand, "Hey, Smoothskin! Why the tresspassin'?"
The man in the blue suit slowly raised his head, his red Pre-War hat slightly removed from his head. Upon looking up, he was greeted with an AER9 Laser Rifle in his face, "How many times have we told you to..." The man in the mask – who was presumably the leader of these people – took the barrel of the laser to move the collar of his jacket to the side. After revealing the blue collar with the yellow, "53" stitched into it, "...Vault Dweller?"
The man began to remove his mask revealing a face that looked like a rotting corpse. Eyes where the corneas were are whited out, hair falling out, nose missing, skin that looks like it's actively rotting, and a voice that sounded like he was gargling with broken glass and gravel. "Apparently, you're not from around here, Smoothskin." The rotting man quickly reached out and grabbed the "Vault Dweller" by the throat and lifted him up, explaining his terms after getting the man to his feet, "Tell ya what, Smoothie. Give us all the shit you have on you and you can go free." The man let him go and pointed to the bag, "Turn it!"
The jumpsuited man disapprovingly took the messenger bag off and threw it in front of him at the rotting man's feet. The rotting man opened the bag and started rummaging around inside it. Taking note of the man's face, he looked back to the blue suited man with a slight bit of humor in his face, "Don't look so glum, chum. You might make it out with your skin, if you're lucky!" He looked over to his compatriots and yelled out, "Food! We can sell it for caps, but not much else!"
The "Vault Dweller," turned to walk away when the rotting man fired a bolt from his laser rifle, "Hold on there, Smoothie! We wanna see what's in the rucksack! Turn it over!" The man had a look on his face. At first it was a look of anger, but then an idea came to him. The rotting man raised the laser rifle in a small gesture, signaling to the "Vault Dweller" who was in charge. The man knelt down and started opening the backpack. He was slowly unpacking the pack, taking out a "Big Book of Science", a number of bottles of Nuka Cola, and a few stimpaks. The rotting man started losing his patience firing a laser bolt wildly in the air, then pointing the rifle back at the "Vault Dweller". "Hurry the fuck up, Smoothie," the rotting man screamed, "or those shitty cigarettes you smoke won't be the only thing turned to ashes!" The "Vault Dweller" was taking a risk. He knew it…
He started moving slower.
That was it. The rotting man approached the "Vault Dweller", reloading his rifle as he did. "Alright, asshole, I had just about enough out o..." Hand still in the backpack, a plasma bolt rocked through the bag and struck the rotting man in the abdomen, blowing a chunk out of him. The jumpsuited man pulled a large pistol from the bag – black in appearance with a green canister on top and a large silver heat sink on the barrel – and blasted another plasma bolt from the pistol. The leader of the pack of deformed individuals melted into a puddle of goo left by the energy of the pistol.
Quickly looting the pile he took all the stuff that was stolen from him not more and a moment ago, and started running away. It took a moment of thinking on the pack's part, but as he was running away, they started firing upon the man, nailing the ground at his heels repeatedly. The man quickly ran back to pick up his previously discarded bag and started running as fast as he could, rounding a nearby street and disappearing around the corner, jumping over a fallen light pole in the process.
He was gone; a pair of shoe tracks left in his wake, among other things. The other rotting men who were holed up in the building gathered and stood outside the door and looked at where the man ran.
Well, the man thought, this is a hell of a start.