Begin Recording

A Case of the Glows

Recording by Scribe Ellison

I'm on guard, trying not to let my mind wander as I stare at the same view from the roof of the house nearest the bridge. Across the river bleak land slopes down into a sunset haze of distance. Behind me I can hear the bustle of the settlement.

I'm pondering—daydreaming really—ways to reach the Boston Public Library through the horde of super mutants when I see something coming up the road. A brahmin, but not carrying a massive pack, and a person walking beside it. Something is wrong.

I tun and call down, "Garvey! Someone's coming. One person, brahmin, no pack. I think the person's injured."

"Thanks, Scribe!" Preston Garvey hurries towards the bridge, pausing to get a warning whoop from the siren. The farmers below put down their rakes and head for their guard posts.

The brahmin comes into sight by the bridge and I see Dogmeat running out to meet it with Garvey running behind him. Then Garvey's supporting the staggering person—who's wearing a blue vault suit.

Even from up here I can see Em looks on her last legs. Garvey hollers, "Doc Jennaaaaa!"

"Coming!"

"General's soaked up a few rads."

I hear Em say, "A few." and she slaps the siren on her way past, ringing the all clear. She looks up and sees me, "Scribe, come get this brahmin!"

I rush down from the roof. Em is gray-faced and sunken-eyed, and her left hand is red and puffy. The bundle in the crook of her arm is a baby, a disturbingly silent baby. And then I realize what the brahmin is carrying. Two limp children, hanging onto a makeshift harness. They're patchy haired and skeletal. Advanced glows. Long term glows. Even the brahmin has sores that hint it's been irradiated too.

Doc Jenna runs up, curses, and retreats. "Get them in here, I'll prep some radaway."

The hospital is the cleanest house in Sanctuary and the best repaired. It has real beds, and Doc Jenna hurriedly hangs radaway bags beside three of them. I help get the kids off the brahmin and get them inside. Neither of the children resists or really tries to do anything. They smell like waste and corpses, in addition to looking half dead. Doc Jenna looks over and says, "Scribe, you've been drafted. Get those filthy clothes off them. This would happen the one day my nurses are gone!"

I hesitate at the thought of undressing children, but their clothes are literal rags and foul. I grab some medical gowns from a bed and offer, "Hey you two, these will be more comfortable and let the Doc get a look at you. Come on, can you stand up long enough to get out of those stinky pants?"

We manage it, the two kids get changed without me having to do more than provide encouragement and hold up the clean robes. One is a boy and one a girl, but neither gives a name when I ask. They look like they haven't washed in a month.

Across the room Em gets her own sleeve up and scrubs the inside of her elbow with disinfectant. She lets Doc Jenna hook up the bag of radaway and lies back. "I was on rad-x the whole time. Gave it to them on the ride back for what that's worth. Don't think the baby's going to make it."

Doc Jenna nods. She turns and takes the still silent baby from Garvey. "Get on the radio, get my nurses back from Tenpines and call Carla and Doc Weathers. I think I have enough radaway but I'd pay more."

"You got it, Doc. I'll be back. Want to keep the scribe? I'll get someone else to his post."

I offer, "I've done the basic med course all the Brotherhood does." I didn't choose to be a medic, but I can help. I didn't choose to teach the children either but I attempt a comforting voice. "Hey, see that bag of medicine? You two need to have those too. The needle hurts a little but not much, see, the General's fine with hers."

Dogmeat comes in and Em frees her other hand to pet him. The two kids get a little life in their faces at the sight of the dog.

The boy says, "We don't want it." And the girl shakes her head and motions with her claw hands as if pushing away the medicine.

"It's just radaway, you'll feel a lot better."

"No. Don't take our glow."

I look at Doc Jenna who's approaching with two bags of radaway after settling the baby in a bed. She does not look inclined to listen to protests. "Children of Atom? Em, why'd you bring me bomb lovers?"

"We're universes, we hold a million universes, we can release so much life..." The boy mumbles. Ok, I've heard the nuts in Megaton but hearing those words out of a child who can't be more than ten and can't possibly know what he's saying is quite disturbing.

Em sighs a quiet, "Sorry Doc..."

"Ok you two, my friend just about cooked herself getting you here and I need to hook up your meds before I can look at your baby sister. Will you let me do it?"

They shake their heads, pleading.

I wonder if the doctor will tie them down. I hope she doesn't ask me to help.

Instead Em sits up and locks eyes with the girl then the boy. "I have a nuke mine. If you want your glow back next week you can set it off and sit by it and get sick again. I promise. So please let the doc fix you up for now."

The two children look at each other and I wonder if they're thinking about it or just too sick to actually fight against medical care. But maybe the promise does it because they relax and allow Doc Jenna to hook them up to radaway. She's gentle with them and talks about how tomorrow they'll be able to eat delicious food and take baths and play with the dog, which seems unlikely to me. "Patients, here's water, drink as much as you can. Scribe, can you keep an eye on everybody for a bit?"

"Sure." I say. I have chores, but none of those are as important as this.

Doc Jenna turns back to the baby, which starts crying finally then stops when it receives a bottle.

The door opens and Shiloh peeks in and whispers, "Mom?"

Em lifts her free hand and Shiloh tiptoes over and gives her mother a hug. "Mom, are you all right?"

"I feel awful and I was tossing my cookies all the way home but I'll be fine in a day or two. See? Pip-boy says no organ damage."

"What happened with the bomb lovers?"

"It didn't go very well." Em says with a tired grin. "I'll tell you tomorrow all right? And I have a mission for you. As soon as these two are up, show them how much fun we have—treats, toys, books. But remember they won't be very strong, so lots of food and games of Blast Radius and less hunting molerats or nagging the Paladins for vertibird rides."

Shiloh nods eagerly. "Bread and jam and the kittens at Abernathy's."

"Right. Now shoo, I have rads to sleep off."

"Ok. I love you, Mom."

"Love you too, baby."

When the little girl is gone I can't help asking, "Vertibird rides?"

"Danse took her on a patrol for her birthday. She wants to be the first Minuteman pilot now, for our air force of… zero aircraft." Em chuckles and closes her eyes.

I have heard a rumor: Paladin Danse is in love with the General of the Minutemen. Of course I've also heard the rumor: Paladin Danse is a synth and the elders are covering it up. Now is not the time to ask, when my conversation partner has dozed off.

Doc Jenna comes back in and says, "Scribe, can you keep watch for another few hours until my staff comes back from the raider attack at Tenpines? I'm putting diagnostic bands on these two, anything turns red you come get me."

"Glad to help." I say and settle down to wait.

An hour passes, Dogmeat leaves then comes back in and settles down under his mistress' cot, the doctor comes back through a few times, the children don't stir, and Em eventually wakes up. "Help me unhook this, I need the latrine. Where's the doc?"

"I'm sorry… the baby didn't make it. Doc Jenna fell asleep in her office and I didn't want to wake her."

"Damn. I didn't think she'd live, but… damn. These two?"

I motion to the diagnostic bands, which have the same medical monitoring function as the Pip-boy. Both kids have radiation poisoning of course, and the boy's kidneys are looking bad, struggling to clean his blood.

Em's up, unhooking the empty radaway bag from the needle in her arm. She stops to drink from the carton of purified water the doctor left, then heads for the bathroom. When she gets back I help her hook up another bag of radaway and she lies down again, checking her own vitals on her Pip-boy. After a while I hear, "Can't sleep. Got a holotape on you? I'll tell you what happened."

"I didn't kill their parents, scribe. That's the first thing I want to record! They were already orphans." Em says.

"I didn't go in planning to kill anybody. The idea was to talk to the Children of Atom living at the site they call Crater House to see if I could convince them to stop shooting at provisioners headed to the lighthouse. I didn't think they'd have much to trade but I was hoping we could at least have a ceasefire.

"One of the caravans did meet a 'missionary' more interested in converting her than shooting her so we all got to hear the good word secondhand. A new prophet had come to Crater House, the true prophet who could drink the water and not get sick. He even glowed like a ghoul. That's the story Carla brought me. Carla also brought a flag someone could carry to show they were interested in being converted.

"Back before the war people would come to my door to spread the good word too, but it was a very different good word! Have you listened to the good word of Atom, Scribe?"

I admit I've heard a rant or two from the Megaton chapter of the cult but I haven't studied their beliefs. The official Brotherhood position is that the Children of Atom are just another lot of kooks, maybe a little more dangerous than some of the other lots of kooks.

We're in the hospital, across the room from the sleeping forms of two children who, like my hostess, are suffering through treatment for radiation sickness. The Megaton kooks may be a benign branch of a more serious problem.

"I got to the top of the road—Dogmeat came along, he warned me about the mines along the way but as soon as my pip-boy started clicking I sent him home. And took a rad-x.

"The road ends at a metal arch over the road, made of scrap. It was crowded with people in those raggedy clothes, all pointing guns at me. I held out the flag, and my hands, and called, "Just here to talk."

"They whispered to each other, I think they recognized me. After a minute their new prophet stepped forward. Big guy, piercing blue eyes and long beard and he'd got himself this long billowy robe. "I am Confessor Abraham, the prophet. What brings you to our church?"

"Nice to meet you, Confessor. I'm Em Mason, and I came to talk."

"You're the leader of the unenlightened who moved into the lighthouse. You killed the blessed who lived there."

His followers were lowering their weapons so I confessed. "I didn't know the ferals were important to you, and they were attacking the other settlements nearby. I didn't mean any insult."

"Ghouls are the blessed of Atom, preserved forever by the power of the glow. Atom's immortals." And all the people behind him murmured, "And we shall be like them." All together and it made the hair on my neck stand up.

"I could bring you some more ghouls if that would help. I'd like to make peace between your church and the settlers. Is there a chance we could come to a truce?" I think I managed not to be sarcastic when I said that, about bringing in more ghouls. Heaven knows we can always find more ferals.

The prophet invited me to attend their service, indicating that was the price for talking terms. Maybe he thought he could convert me. And there was something about him. When I walked closer I could see he really did glow, green lines on his hands and face like the glow had gotten into his veins.

The rest of the cult, maybe twelve or fifteen people, beckoned and moved out of the way and stared at me as I entered their camp. The smell of them hit me before the sight did—they smelled like—Scribe, you know radiation hits the digestive system like a batch of bad mirelurk cakes and they smelled like waste. They were all skinny and balding and miserable looking. I smiled and nodded and had to turn off my pip-boy's Geiger counter since it was clicking like static on a TV.

I'd known it would be hard, but forcing myself to walk into an irradiated area—you can't feel it, but you feel like you can feel it. My whole skin itched and my stomach churned just from knowing what was happening to me.

Crater House isn't really a house, it's a series of shacks built over and around a crater made by a crashed prewar airplane. You can see the wings broken off and the body of the plane in the crater. Something in that plane is throwing off high levels of radiation. The crater is full of water and it steams like a hot bath. We walked over it on a bridge, the prophet first then me and the cultists who all murmured something pious as we crossed right over the source of the radiation. The Children of Atom's meeting area was built up on poles over the crater, in the steam. It had pews stolen from some real church and a bedsheet with the radiation warning symbol painted on it.

That's where the children were, on filthy sleeping bags in the back of the chapel. The baby';s bottle was full of milk but the brahmin was drinking the irradiated water too.

"So..." Em stops, lets out a long breath. "I didn't know. The settlers at the lighthouse had been watching the cult, but they hadn't seen the children. I never thought the cult might have children in it. So that changed my mission. If adults want to die from the glows I can't stop them but children… so I had the choice to leave them or probably kill all the adults to get them out. Which would certainly solve the problem with attacks on the caravans so… It was not a good moment, Scribe."

"So what did you do?" I ask.

"The prophet had a lot to say, so I let him talk while I looked around. He wanted to be sure I knew their doctrine. I don't know what the Megaton bunch believes but this prophet said a lot about how every atom contains a universe, and by splitting atoms those worlds are released and creation becomes richer. Getting the glows is the penance for giving birth to a universe, or something, and the longer someone lives with radiation sickness the more worlds they've created. He also thought ghouls are some kind of chosen beings who carry wisdom… that part is true, since some ghouls have been around since the war, but the ghouls I know aren't any more enlightened than anybody else and they'd tell you so!

"Confessor Abraham got his prophet status because he seems to be immune to rad sickness and he glows like a ghoul, so it seems like he's turning into one. He was certainly healthier than any of his congregation. I guess they were all hoping that following him would get them the same immunity. One of them said that by irradiating people with those awful rad guns was to bring them to the church, since once you were glowing your only hope was to worship the glow, or something. We use 'the glows' to mean radiation sickness but they think the green light that comes off some irradiated creatures is holy.

I came for diplomacy, but after the sermon I was having doubts. The plan was to offer produce and seeds in exchange for a ceasefire, we had just enough surplus to make it worthwhile if they'd quit shooting at Carla. But now I'm thinking I don't want these fanatics anywhere near a settlement, I don't trust them not to poison the water or something… the church in the Capital tried that? What did they do?...all right, but I want to hear about it once the holotape is done.

So there I was, thinking that killing all these people would be the safest thing to do and maybe even a mercy. I saw two people rush out to throw up from the rads. But I';d come in peace, I couldn't just start shooting.

So I tried diplomacy anyway. "Confessor, does your flock need food? We have seeds and plants for new allied settlements, if your settlement could respect that others don't share your faith."

One woman said, "All will be drawn to the glory of Atom!"

The prophet, though, looked interested in my offer. "Perhaps contact with the unenlightened would give us a chance to spread the true light of Atom. Do your settlements also make chems?"

So the prophet had just gotten the idea of a protection racket. "Not enough to trade." I said, mostly honestly and hoping to kill off that idea. Then the prophet said it was time for his daily meditation and off he went to a little shack on the edge of the crater and shut himself in.

The congregation gathered around me, eager to tell me more about their beliefs. I managed to ask about the children. "Where are their families?"

"Their parents have become one with the glow."

"Let me take them with me and find them families. I know other settlements that could take them in. they could always return here once they grow up."

"Certainly nobody was taking care of them now, the boy was feeding the baby and the girl sat looking out at the sky. But all I got from the adults was another sermon about how young people have a better chance of being like the prophet, who can embrace the glow without suffering. Apparently radiation sickness is a sign of sin leaving the body, not because free radicals screw up your insides. I popped another rad-x and I'm pretty sure that was a sin because the men glared and the women immediately told me I didn't need the medicine, that it was keeping me from enlightenment. I'm not referring to them as individuals because I never did learn any of their names except confessor Abraham, and I'd bet prewar money he just got it from the bible and it's not his real name.

"The Pip-boy was telling me that even with rad-x it was time to get out of there, and the only thing I could think of was to give up on diplomacy, go see the prophet, and offer to buy the children. It would be failing my mission, but it didn't seem possible to succeed.

"The followers didn't want me to go up, the prophet's meditation time is sacred, blah blah. But they weren't physically strong enough to stop me from climbing up the bridge to the prophet's shack. It was locked and no one answered when I called out, so I… unlocked it with a whack from my rifle butt.

"And there he was, just like I am now. Radaway in his arm, empty bags everywhere, rad-x bottles and blood packs. He was painting his glow on, some green goo he could've gotten out of a radroach.

"I said some words I won't repeat since I want the lady vault overseer to still like me after she listens to this, and of course half the cult was crowded on the bridge behind me since they'd been trying to stop me so they all saw too. The prophet said it wasn't real radaway but someone shot him with one of their gamma guns…

"I jumped off the bridge, slid down the slope of the crater and only just managed not to go into the water. That's what happened to my hand, it's the only part of me that went in and the water was hot, not just irradiated hot but actually hot. So I climbed around the crater until I got to the poor sick brahmin and threw some straps on it then told the children we were leaving. There was lots of shooting and yelling by then so they didn't argue much when I tossed them on the brahmin and we left as fast as it could stagger.

"We stopped at the lighthouse long enough for settlers to give us food for the road and help me stuff rad-x and purified water down everybody and make sure we weren't ourselves radioactive, but they don't have enough radaway to take us in or enough spare people to send anyone with us. The Children of Atom were likely to attack the lighthouse so they needed all hands and needed me to be far away. So best we just walk home.

"The glows hit about halfway and I had to stop a lot to get sick at both ends. That was fun. Managed to feed the baby clean milk and get the children to eat crackers and drink water. They did ask me to take them back but didn't try to get away while I was sick. They couldn't have walked back by then anyway.

"And I don't… ah, two bags in and I still feel like death. We made it here. The baby died but the other two are alive. I don't know their names. That's what happened."

The hospital door opens and the four nurses are back, with news of the attack on Tenpines and ready to check on the children, wake them up and get them to the latrine and water and crackers. I am rendered superfluous and ordered off to bed, with a final, "Tell me about the Megaton cult tomorrow, Scribe!" from the General.