- "Hey Moira, I have molerat skins for you."
The light inside Craterside Supplies was dim as always. Moira was behind the counter, tinkering with something or other and when she saw Amy she cheerfully greeted her. Amy thought there was something different about her voice but she ignored that thought.
- "This one skin here, I'm pretty sure it's the biggest one I've ever got. Completely unmarked as well, I've got it in the eye."
- "Hmph" - the expected sigh of displeasure.
- "It charged straight at me!" protested Amy. "So ..." she paused "I want five caps for it". She mentally prepared herself for a long haggle. A while ago Moira told her that she was worried that people were taking advantage of Amy's inexperience and short-changing her, so she was going to teach Amy how to barter. Amy sold most of the stuff she hunted and found here at Craterside Supplies, if there was anyone she needed to worry about giving her a bad deal it was Moira herself. Still, she took Moira's tutoring to heart. Now she decided to start off with what was as far as she could tell a pretty high asking price, just like Moira taught her.
Moira gave the skin a quick glance, said "Yeah, looks pretty big" and handed over the five caps Amy asked for. Something was terribly wrong here.
- "Moira, look at me" demanded Amy.
- "OK, sure" there was surprise in Moira's voice but a little less amusement than Amy expected. She looked at Moira's face closely and immediately saw the red and puffy eyes.
- "What's wrong?"
- "Uhm, I'm not sure what you mean. Everything is fine"
- "Come on, you can tell me. I may be able to help"
Moira sighed "I doubt it, there is no need to bother you with this. But OK, fine. It's Lesko." Seeing Amy's uncertain look Moira nodded to herself. "I forgot, I never told you about him. Lesko raised me. My folks died when I was very little, I don't remember them at all. He said he first saw me when I wondered into their settlement as a little girl. I brought a bunch of twigs and scrap and was trying to trade them for food." She smiled sadly. "So anyhoo, he lived there by himself and he took me in and looked after me ever since. Well, when I grew up it was mostly the other way round. We moved to Canterbury Commons, it was safer there. I started going with the caravans when I was maybe 14-15, couple of years later I was running my own ones. We lived there for many years. But after a while it was just ..." she paused "Anyway, long story short we moved to Megaton and I set up Craterside Supplies."
- "Wow I didn't know that" said Amy. "But you said you moved to Megaton together?"
Moira nodded - "Yes, he lived there until maybe a year or so. Most folks that aren't new here will remember him." She looked directly at Amy. "You know, there was so much he's done for this ditches that bring water from the river to Megaton and Springvale, he did that. Him and Walter. They dug a bunch of new wells too. They even had pipes that brought water right into folks' homes."
- "I was wondering what all those pipes were for" said Amy. "But it doesn't work"
- "It worked for a while. In the kitchen sink you could open the spinny thing..."
- "It's called a tap" said Amy
- "Huh. Anyhoo, you could open the tap and water would come right out! But the pipes kept breaking down and leaking and bad stuff kept getting into the water and eventually it stopped working completely." Moira paused for a second, then continued animatedly "There were so many other things he's helped with. He's secured a bunch of walkways that kept collapsing. Changed the guard towers on the wall so you could build them taller. Simms loved that one. But you ask almost anybody here about Lesko, all you'll get is 'He was kind of weird'."
Amy was a little shocked - she's never heard that much bitterness in her friend's voice before. "So you said he was here until a year ago. What happened?"
- "They had a big argument with Simms about something, I don't know the details. But he came back furious and said 'He doesn't want to live under that idiot's command a minute longer' or something like that and he's leaving for Grayditch. I tried to calm him down, talk him out of it, you know, but he wouldn't listen at all. He gets that way sometimes" Moira shrugged. "So he left. I thought he would come back to Megaton in a couple of months' time, but he never did. That spat with Simms must have been really something. I used to visit whenever I could, he came back to visit me a few times as well. But recently I've been so busy with the store and everything, you know ..."
- "And now you really miss him." said Amy.
- "It's a little bit more than that." Moira paused to take a deep breath and then continued. "We haven't had any contact with Grayditch for a while now, it's the closest settlement to Megaton so it's a little bit strange. And then yesterday someone told me they've heard that Grayditch's been attacked by ants and completely destroyed" Moira shook her head "It doesn't make any sense, ants don't attack settlements like that, and destroying a whole settlement, that's just crazy talk, but -" her voice shook a little " - I'm just a bit worried."
- "Oh wow that's ... " Amy tried to wrap her head around the idea of ants overrunning a whole settlement. Like Moira said, it didn't make sense. She's hunted ants before, they could probably be dangerous in large groups but they never seemed aggressive at all. "You said Grayditch is close to here?"
- "It's a little less than a day away."
- "So couldn't somebody go and check what's happening there? Maybe someone is heading that way?"
- "I wanted to go myself but - " Moira bit her lip. " - I would need some backup. The way there is too dangerous for me alone. I asked Simms already but ever since you've found those dead raiders in Super Duper Mart he's got people scouting that area and isn't interested in anything else. I've asked others but they're all saying it don't make sense and someone's playing a joke on me or went crazy or something. And they're probably right but - I just need to know for sure."
- "I could go with you, I'm a good shot" offered Amy.
- "Don't even think about it. It could be really dangerous. Do you remember what happened last time you went exploring?" Moira scolded her. "Don't worry about it. Lucky Harith's caravan should be coming to Megaton some time soon. I'll ask him and his guards to go with me. He'll complain all the way to Grayditch but he'll agree in the end. I'm just not sure how soon he'll be here. It could be a week or even longer."
The next day Amy got up early in the morning and set off while it was still dark, using the pipboy light to guide her way. She met the sunset looking at the horizon in the direction of Grayditch, at least where it was supposed to be according to her pipboy map.
- "So we're heading to investigate the rumors of Grayditch' destruction?". Silver Shroud's question sounded more like a statement.
- "You know already"
- "It is a noble goal. Lift the shroud of mystery from the fate of this dwelling. Perhaps we could even save the lives of innocents. It is surprising however that you've reached that decision. Only a couple of weeks ago you were reluctant to venture outside the immediate vicinity of Megaton."
- "I know, I still feel really nervous to be going so far away from Megaton. It's just ... From what Moira tells me this Lesko is like a father to her. Not knowing what happened to him and if he's in danger or ... Dad was supposed to have gone with caravan of this Old Luke and it's been so long and nobody's come across it. Moira said she keeps asking every caravan that goes through Megaton and I know she is but there is still no news and it's -" Amy took a deep breath. "It's the worst thing. Not knowing. So if I can help her find out, I've got to try."
- "Of course."
Amy took another deep breath, longer this time. - "Besides, ants destroying a settlement? That's ridiculous. It's probably some asshole's idea of a joke."
- "And yet I see you've taken all the weapons you own with you. You're also carrying enough ammo to fight the Great War all over again."
Amy grimaced "You know, just to be on the safe side. Makes me feel better."
- "I wonder, how could such a ridiculous rumor start? Perhaps some Grayditch locals have somehow disturbed a nest of these angry arthropods and so met an unfortunate end. The news of this grew ever more fantastically exaggerated until this event was transformed into an absolute annihilation of the entire settlement."
- "Yes that's what I'm thinking too. I think I remember someone saying there was a nest somewhere around in that direction." Amy smirked "I'll have to break the news to the people of Grayditch. 'Oh hi sorry that your town got destroyed by ants, by the way aren't you all supposed to be dead?'. See what they think of that." She looked off into the distance. "It'll be interesting to meet this Lesko."
After a while Amy started to feel tense again. This was now the furthest away she's been from Megaton since ... well ever. She pushed the feeling to the back of her mind - she was getting really good at this now. There's nothing dangerous here anyway, she told herself. No dogs, no molerats, not even bloatflies. Moira could have probably made the journey herself. She was right to be cautious, she thought, you never know what you'll run into in the Wasteland.
So far, Amy's luck was still holding. A few times she spotted dogs in the distance but she didn't have to fight any of them. Once, looking down from a vantage point on top of a hill, Amy saw a whole pack of dogs - she counted eight of them, four pups and the rest adults. They were crossing what looked like a dried up riverbed of what used to be a small stream. Amy readied her rifle and waited but the dogs went a different way. After waiting some time to see if they were going to return Amy got up and kept on walking.
- "Well this is pretty uneventful." said Amy after some time. "The biggest thing I had to worry about turned out to be that damn rucksack. My back is killing me. Shoulders too."
- "Yes, uneventful is very much the right description. This building up ahead, could be a good place for a brief rest. We could also investigate interesting inventory inside."
- "No, Shroud. No exploring, no scavenging, no going off on adventures. Moira is waiting for news, remember?"
- "Yes, you're quite right. We must not keep a friend in suspense. We could explore this area more thoroughly later."
- "We go straight to Grayditch, make sure it's fine and find Lesko. Oh and tell him to get his ass back to Megaton straight away. He and Moira clearly haven't seen each other for too long. Now I just need to take a rest."
Up ahead there was a row of buildings on the side of the destroyed road. Amy picked the one that looked the most intact and came inside through the hole where the door must have been before. She sat on the floor and stretched her back with a quiet groan of pleasure.
The wall in front of her had a huge hole. Through it, Amy could see the building across the road. She saw several ants there. Amy reached for her rifle, but the ants did not seem to take any interest in her. They scurried in and around the remains of the building`. The roof and most of the front and left walls have collapsed and the rubble formed a ramp which the ants climbed.
- "Look!" Amy whispered in mock terror pointing towards the group of ants. "These must be the ants that destroyed Grayditch. Look what they've done to that building!"
- "Heh. I wonder if the bombs they dropped in the Great War contained a multitude of murderous ants instead of military munitions."
- "I guess that's why they called them the Ant-om Bombs." She shook her head. "Oh God, good job there was no one around to hear that one." She looked at the ants. "You know, apparently before the war the ants used to be so small they could fit on your fingernail."
- "Bloatflies used to be much smaller too"
- "Yes I remember reading about how when flies flew around your head you could just wave them away." Amy sighed "Why did everything have to mutate into something giant, ugly and dangerous? Why isn't there a single animal that mutated into something smaller, cuter and friendlier?"
- "Well, evolution selects traits that are advantageous in the environment a creature inhabits."
- "Yes I know all that"
- "I guess being small, cute and friendly does not help you survive in this environment."
- "I guess not." Amy smirked.
Amy kept walking until it got dark. She would need to find a safe place to sleep. Was Moira wrong about Grayditch being less than a day's journey from Megaton, she wondered. Then she thought that Grayditch must have indeed been less than a day's walk for most in Megaton - just not for her. With the number of times she had to stop and rest it's no wonder it took this long.
She wasn't really built for life in the Wasteland, reflected Amy. She had this peculiar talent for killing, it saved her life multiple times already. She was also really good at hiding, at staying unseen and unheard and this talent would no doubt prove very useful many times in the future. Other than that however, she was still too weak, too soft for this world. Some day her strange battle trance would not be enough to save her from all the dangers she would face here. She needed to toughen up, be as hard as the wastelanders. They had the advantage in that they grew up in this world, learned its rules from the earliest childhood. She had to start catching up.
It took some time but eventually Amy found a good place to sleep. It was inside a relatively intact house. Amy secured the door as well as she could, then went upstairs. Even if some critter managed to make it inside, the stairs would form an additional barrier. Still, she slept fitfully, waking up to every loud noise. She set off for Grayditch at dawn. According to her pipboy map she was very close now.
Soon she saw the buildings. There were so many of them, most of them ruined but still towering above everything else around them. When Amy got closer she saw that the remains of the big houses stood in a huge pile of rubble, like a hill made from irregular blocks of concrete. It was like some insane monument to the pre-war world.
These were not like the buildings in Springvale, where each one could fit at most a few residential quarters from the Vault, it looked like some of these buildings used to be as tall as the Super-Duper Mart. From the number of windows it looked like many of them were three or four stories high. Before the War this place must have housed as many people as lived in the entire Vault. Amy remembered Billy Creel telling her about DC ruins, how there used to be buildings there ten stories high or more. How many people must have lived in the old DC then? The thought took her breath away.
Soon Amy saw the wall around Grayditch. She understood Lukas Simms' disdain for it - it was nowhere near as impressive as the Megaton walls. Mostly it was pre-war chainlink fence, leaning precipitously in some places and completely collapsed in others, reinforced on one side by a pile of concrete. She saw a gate with a faded pre-war sign 'Welcome to Grayditch'. The gate wasn't manned and Amy felt a first pang of worry. She walked through.
- "We must be on our toes. I sense there may be danger ahead."
- "Yes I have a bad feeling about this too." Amy studied the ruins. "Over there should be a good vantage point. Or a good place to fall down and break your neck. I'll climb up there."
Soon after she started climbing Amy thought this might have been a bad idea. The pile of rubble was unstable, several times as soon as she thought she found purchase on a jutting block of concrete it would break or shift to the side and Amy would nearly come tumbling down all the way to the ground. She felt a painful stab in her right ankle from what felt like a rusty pipe - she'd need to get some alcohol in Grayditch to disinfect the gash if it was deep, she reminded herself. Another time in the middle of an unfortunate shift of position she got a jab just under her ribs from a protruding block of concrete. It hurt and momentarily knocked the wind out of her. There would probably be a serious bruise there but at least nothing was broken.
Finally she got to the top and found a block that was large and stable enough. She laid flat on it for some time, breathing hard, seemingly all her muscles aching from the climb. At least when she examined her ankle it turned out it felt a lot worse than it was in reality, there was a cut but it was very shallow. Still it was better to get some alcohol in the settlement later.
Finally after a long rest Amy got up. She was right about one thing, this was the perfect vantage point. One alley just off the main street looked different - the buildings there looked like they were repaired. This is where most of the residents of Grayditch must have lived. Amy couldn't see any locals on the street. She could however see movement, a lot of it.
Amy walked slowly closer to the edge of the block, squatted and focused her eyes on the Grayditch below her. A few seconds later her mouth hung open and a chill run through her.
The moving shapes below her were ants. So many of them. They were scurrying around seemingly aimlessly, although a strange thought occurred to Amy that there was in reality a mindbogglingly complex, intricate pattern to their movement. She noticed that while most of the ants were a normal size, a small number of them was almost twice as large as their brethren.
She continued watching the ants while a stream of thoughts ran through her mind. Did this mean that whoever told Moira that Grayditch has been destroyed by ants was right? She didn't see any dead bodies but she couldn't see any signs of human life either. Surely the residents couldn't live with so many ants running around their streets. But how was this possible? It didn't make any sense. What she was seeing now simply couldn't be. Yet, she knew her eyes weren't deceiving her, there were really ants running all over Grayditch.
- "Maybe" she whispered "Maybe all the people here aren't dead. Maybe they're just hiding inside their houses. Or maybe they got away when the town got overrun. "
- "If we could uncover the mystery of this maligned metropolis we could save its residents!" answered Shroud. "But I'm unsure how best to proceed."
- "I could wait here some time, maybe after a while there will be less of them. Then I could try to go down there and investigate."
- "This is a frustratingly indirect course of action, but better ideas fail me at this time"
- "I know, I hate it too but I can't think of anything better either. Going down there while there's so many of them would be suicide. Maybe I'll get some better ideas while we wait."
- "Then we better get comfortable, this could could take considerable time."
- "If I knew I would've brought cards." - Amy smiled weakly, then looked at Grayditch. "How could this happen? It makes no sense. Maybe if they were right on top of a nest?"
- "It clearly wasn't there before."
- "Yes, that's true. " Amy pinched her lower lip slightly with her thumb and index finger. "Maybe the nest expanded in that direction somehow?" She shook her head "Anyway, the main thing is to find the survivors. Maybe they can tell us what happened."
For a while Amy sat at the edge of the pile of ruins, letting her legs dangle over the edge, thinking. Below her, there seemed to be as many ants as before, still crawling around. She felt more strongly now that there was some pattern to their movement but couldn't tell at all what it could be. After a while she got up slowly, walked around to stretch her legs and find a more comfortable place to sit. There was a large piece of what used to be the wall of the building intact. Amy carefully cleared the rubble around it, sat down and tried to lean her back against it. There were pieces of metal sticking out from the surface and Amy could never quite manage to find a comfortable spot. While shifting around, she must have accidentally kicked a large piece of rubble and it came crashing and tumbling down with what seemed like deafening noise. Amy froze in place.
One of the ants below stopped its movement, lifted its head, seemingly looking at her, then headed for the spot where she was sitting. Amy looked back at the ant, her whole body tense, trying not to move a muscle. The creature lifted its head then spat a jet of liquid out of its mouth in Amy's direction. It made her jump but it landed nowhere near high enough to hit her. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, some of the tension leaving her body. "Stupid insect" she muttered.
The ant spat in Amy's direction a couple more times, each one landing well short of its target. Amy thought she'd just wait for the thing to get bored and go back to whatever it was doing before. She had her eyes locked on the ant below her until she noticed movement at the edge of her vision. Quickly looking around she saw several other ants moving towards her. She felt a brief surge of panic but quickly fought it down. It didn't matter how many ants there were if none of them could hit her. Besides, if it came to this she could take a few ants anyway, this many of them could be dangerous but she had the higher ground, they probably couldn't even reach her. This would be the last resort - Amy would rather avoid shooting for fear of attracting the attention of the rest of the ants. She wasn't sure if they could even hear a gunshot but she wasn't taking any chances.
Still this was really strange. Amy saw ants before and hunted a few. They never attacked her on sight, wouldn't even react to her unless she was really close. They had a powerful bite - in Doc Church's clinic she saw people with broken bones from ant bites - but they couldn't 'spit' like these ants. The Grayditch ants were much more aggressive and also seemingly smarter. Maybe they were another species, she thought.
After a few more attempts the ant below stopped. It moved its ugly head in different directions, as if considering its course of action. Now it's going to leave, Amy thought, but instead the ant started climbing the pile of rubble.
This was bad. Thoughts run through Amy's head at supersonic speed. The mountain of rubble she was on top of used to be a building before. For whatever reason it survived better on the Grayditch side, there were mostly intact walls that the ants could climb. She remembered someone in Megaton telling her about how sometimes ants would try to climb the walls and whoever was on guard duty would have to shoot them.
Could she jump down and make a run for it? No, it was too high. Could she climb down? No, it would take too long and the ants looked to be much better climbers than she was. The only option, then was to shoot the ants and hope the gunfire doesn't alert the rest of their brethren.
The realization that she had no other choice somehow made Amy feel a little calmer. She took out the rifle and then everything around her slowed down and her thoughts took a familiar dispassionate precision.
'Six hostiles detected, threat level - very low, optimal aiming for the eyes, to hit chance 68%'.
Amy took down the first ant and then two more that followed it. Other ants continued crawling in towards the ruined building.
'Eleven hostiles detected, threat level - low'.
Amy continued shooting. Three more ants lay sprawling on the ground, some kind of liquid oozing from the points where the bullets penetrated their carapace. Still, Amy could see more and more ants converging on her spot.
'Twenty hostiles detected, threat level - low'.
Aim, line up the shot, squeeze the trigger. Aim at another enemy, line up the shot, squeeze the trigger. It became a continuous motion occasionally punctuated by reloading. More and more bodies of ants lay on the ground motionless but the number of enemies moving towards her continued growing. They were getting closer and closer. Amy could see a number of the bigger ants among them.
'This is bad'. The thought felt like a faint echo, a whisper from across the room, barely heard as she continued to aim, shoot, aim, shoot, aim, shoot.
'Fifty hostiles detected. Thread level - medium. Optimal strategy - move 0.21 meters to the right, aim for the eyes, to hit chance 84%'.
The ants now made it inside the building she was holed up in and started climbing the stairs. She didn't have a clear line of sight on the ants in front any more, she needed to adjust her position for that. Still on her haunches, she scooted to a better position and shot. This became her modified routine, reposition, aim, shoot, reposition, aim, shoot.
'Sixty seven hostiles detected. Threat level - medium. Warning - rifle ammo low. Remaining ammo four ... three ... two ... one ... zero'.
Amy dropped the rifle and in a single motion picked up her 10 mm gun and continued shooting. Dead ants littered the stairs but their brethren kept climbing over their bodies, higher and higher up the stairs towards her position as she kept on firing.
She now got up and sprinted to a new position, with a better view of the destroyed stairwell. Her arms and legs were beginning to feel heavy. This thought registered somewhere in the back of her mind. The bigger ants - the soldiers - needed more bullets to put them down. Each extra shot at them meant not being able to shoot the smaller ones, lost fractions of a second which translated into shorter distance between her and the attackers, which shortened the time until they could get in melee range and overwhelm her. Reloading lost even more precious milliseconds. The numbers run through her mind as she kept taking the ants down one after another. A realization came - totally emotionless, just an acknowledgement of the fact - that she wasn't taking the ants down fast enough.
'Twenty four hostiles remaining. Time until hostiles are within range - 8.3 seconds. Threat level - high'.
The ants started spitting at her. Their judgement of distance was bad, she didn't event need to retreat as their liquid projectiles landed short. It bought her some time, but then ants continued moving forward. Two soldier ants were leading the charge.
'Eighteen hostiles remaining. To hit chance affected by fatigue'.
Amy could faintly hear rhythmic thumping noise - low, as though underwater. Thump thump thump. She realized it was her heartbeat. The first ants made it onto the platform and started spitting at her again - this time from a much closer distance. She now had to anticipate the direction of incoming ant spits and dodge them, all while continuing to shoot at them. A thought entered her mind that this was becoming - difficult? It didn't seem like quite the right word.
'Thirteen hostiles remaining'.
The thumping noise was becoming faster and more louder. She could now also hear a whooshing sound that was getting louder - she realized it was her breathing. She took down one of the soldiers but the second kept advancing at her. Behind it, the smaller ants were spitting at her from all directions. She kept sidestepping and jumping backwards, forwards, side to side in a complicated dance but there were now too many ants to dodge. Two of their shots landed. She faintly felt pain in her left forearm and right hip.
'Eight hostiles remaining. To hit chance affected by injury. To hit chance 88%. Threat level - high'.
She finally took down the second soldier and the remaining ants charged her instead of continuing to spit at her. She was now shooting one-handed, her left arm hanging limply by her side but the ants were so close it didn't matter. She narrowly dodged several attempted bites as she kept firing, this time from point blank range.
'Four hostiles remaining. All hostiles in melee range'.
All the while she kept retreating backwards but now she was backed into a corner. The last remaining ants were converging on her, ready to bite. In a split second before their attacks landed, Amy jumped over one of them, turning around sideways in mid air and and landing in behind it. The ants began to turn around, but Amy was already firing. One, two, three, four.
'All hostiles eliminated'.
Time resumed its normal flow and Amy fell on the ground screaming, as pain hit her like a deathclaw charge. Parts of her that were hit with ant poison felt like they were on fire. The pain made her worst headaches feel like a birthday party. She crawled towards her backpack whispering "Don't pass out, don't pass out ... " to herself. She got to the backpack and opened it, fumbling inside with fingers that refused to obey. Finally she found the Med-X, took it out trying to stop her hands from shaking as best she could and jabbed it into the middle of her right hip. It hurt like hell but she was already in so much pain it made little difference. She then jabbed another Med-X into her left arm.
For half a second panic overwhelmed her as the pain was still there but then the morphine kicked in.
A feeling of peace and relief washed over her as the pain retreated. It still hurt but it felt more distant. Pain was no longer inside her but was more like a far away noise just on the edge of her hearing.
The ant spit burned through her Vault suit. The bare skin showing underneath was was an angry red color and looked to be swelling rapidly. It looked like her jumpsuit was burned through in two more places in the chest area but the armor that Moira added there stopped the poison. Amy took a bottle of water from her backpack and carefully washed the skin in and around the burned area, then took two stimpaks and injected them into her wounds. As expected there was a flare up of pain but it was slight.
Amy could now think - kind of. She felt totally spent mentally as well as physically and could barely form any coherent thoughts. She couldn't climb back down the way she came, the climb would be too unsafe at best of times and was totally out of the question now. She couldn't stay here and wait until more ants show up. This left the only other choice - climbing down the ruined stairs and into what was left of Grayditch.
The climb seemed to take an eternity. The way down was covered with dead ants. Amy pushed them out of the way as carefully as she could and slowly stepped down the ruined stairs. They were slick with the entails of dead ants making it hard not to slip. The stairs ended in a vertical drop, but it was manageable. Amy jumped down, making sure she landed on her uninjured leg. Finally she made her way down to the ground and slowly walked forward, trying to put as little weight as possible on her right leg. She came to the end of a ruined wall and carefully poked her head outside and looked around.
She couldn't see any more ants nor hear their skittering. This was a huge relief - she simply wasn't in any state to fight any more of these things. Now she could safely leave.
- "We can go back to Megaton now" Amy whispered just in case.
- "As tempting a proposition as it seems at present moment, it's not without its problems"
- "That's what I'm thinking too. I'm almost out of ammo. Only three 10 mm bullets left. Not enough to go back." Amy shook her head. "I thought I was being silly taking so much with me. Any less and I would be dead now."
- "Perhaps best not to dwell on that now"
- "Yes. Later. Not now." Amy paused for a moment then continued. "There must be some ammo in these houses. Maybe even survivors."
- "It's also possible that more of these catastrophic critters may turn up later."
- "Yes. God. We'll have to be quick. I'm just so tired."
Amy decided to go through a few buildings in the town first. First thing was to find ammo, but she was running low on food and water as well.
The building that was nearest to the ruins where she fought the ants was a pre-war diner. She knew that's what it was because the title - Bob's Diner was still visible above the entrance, in big somehow friendly looking letters. They must have originally been a bright dark orange colour but have now faded to be barely legible. Even if the letters weren't there, Amy still would've guessed that it was a diner. It reminded her of the Vault diner - the same basic tightly clustered plastic chairs in bright primary colours, the same long counter, even the jukebox at the end. Everything looked like a scaled up children't toy, but a toy that's been thrown under the sofa and then forgotten for years. There was a thick layer of dust on everything. It looked like some of the chairs have been ripped out but otherwise the people of Grayditch left the diner as it was. She was wasting time here, anything that could be worth taking has been taken a very long time ago.
Next she started going through the houses, starting with the one nearest to the diner. The door was locked, luckily Amy always took some lockpicks with her. As she was picking the lock she noticed numerous scratches and dents on the door. It looked like someone tried to force their way inside. Ants? Maybe the people inside the house survived. Amy opened the door and found an old pre-war armchair blocking the way - someone must have tried to hastily assemble a makeshift barricade in front of the door. Amy carefully moved the armchair out of the way and stepped inside.
Her hopes of finding anyone alive inside were immediately dashed. She was two dead ants in the middle of the main room but there was dried blood all over the floor. There was a long trail of blood leading somewhere in the kitchen - it looked like a body has been dragged. Amy followed it, holding her gun with the last three bullets in front of her just in case.
The kitchen was a mess. A large table and some chairs were all knocked over, a pre-war saucepan as well as remains of broken plates were lying on the floor. Amy saw three more dead ants lying in front of a big hole in the wall. How could the ants break through a concrete wall? Amy came closer.
Looking through the rubble in front of the breach, the answer became clear. The hole in the wall was old. The people who lived in this house covered it with what looked like concrete slabs and bricks from the ruined buildings in front of the settlement held together with dried mud. It must have been good enough to keep the elements out but it couldn't stop the ants from getting through. Once they breached the wall, the ants poured inside, massacred everyone in the house and then dragged their bodies outside. Amy shuddered. For the hundredth time she told herself that this didn't make sense. Ants just didn't do things like this - couldn't do things like this. She thought of how she was going to break the news to Moira but then with an abrupt shake of the head chased this thought away. She would think about this later but now she had to move fast. She needed to find ammo, food and water and get the hell out of this place.
Looking through the other houses, Amy saw the same things. Sings of struggle, dead ants, trails of blood on the floor. Amy never saw any dead bodies - it looked like for some reason the ants dragged the dead settlers out. Or at least Amy hoped they were already dead at that point.
She found quite a lot of ammo, not as much as she took to Grayditch but plenty enough to get her back to Megaton. In one of the houses she found an assault rifle and several cases of ammo for it nearby. Judging by the blood splatter all over it the owner was dead, judging by how much ammo was left in the magazine he or she died very quickly. It looked like the people of Grayditch were caught by surprise, all the houses were taken by an overwhelming assault rather than a prolonged siege. This also explained why there was so much water and food left. Some of the food started to spoil - Amy guessed that the massacre of the settlers happened a few days ago.
She tried calling for survivors, at first quietly and then louder, but it made no difference. Amy hoped that it meant that any survivors have left - she really didn't want to think that everyone here was dead. Either way, there was nothing here for her any more.
Amy packed everything she needed in her backpack and headed back. Passing by the first house she visited, Amy paused. She really wanted to get away from here but she was feeling completely shattered. She could barely move her feet and her head felt like it was filled with bricks from nearby ruins, her thoughts seemed to move in slow motion. On top of it she felt a headache coming on. After brief indecision Amy went into the house. She just needed to sit down and rest for a bit, just for a little while and then she would go.
Amy went to the upstairs bedroom. She laid flat on the bed and felt all the tension that filled her body start to leave. She closed her eyes. She just needed to rest for a few minutes, a thought sluggishly came to her head, just a few minutes and then ...