14: Prophecy

The rotting roadside railguard, warped and rusted a blackish orange, squealed under Preston's weight when he took to sitting on it. Preston buckled a moment, unsure it would hold his weight. When it seemed that it might not give, at least not immediately, Preston accepted it was as fine a place as any to rest his feet. He reached instinctually for the spot within his coat where he kept his canteen but was reminded he had neither his coat, nor his canteen. His boots, his strapped trousers, and an undershirt were all that remained of his old life.

Of his new life, there was precious little- least of all water. The firefight that followed Mama Murphy's passing, and his escape from the Corvega assembly plant, was a blur to him. A whirlwind of adrenaline and emotions had consumed him and most of his ammo. He glanced into the distance, seeing Lexington faded on the horizon, before looking down to his sole possession; a pistol-gripped double barrel shotgun in dire need of tender love and care. He couldn't even quite remember when he'd lost his pipe gun.*

Preston rested a hand above his pocket, feeling a satisfying lump of shotgun shells. He wanted for water, but at least he did not want for ammunition. Preston turned his head again, drawn to a slurping noise. The dog he'd rescued- Dogmeat, Mama Murphy had called him- was hunched near a puddle of rainwater that'd filled up the side of an old tire, its source vehicle nowhere to be seen.

"Wish I was you." Preston muttered to the dog, his tongue heavy and dry. "Wouldn't be so picky if I was a dog."

Dogmeat paused his slurping to glance up to Preston. He glanced down at the water, then back to Preston; drink? That look had said.

"I'll pass…" Preston muttered back, as if the dog had spoken. Eerily, Preston thought he saw Dogmeat shrug before he bowed his head back into the remnants of the tire, returning to sate his thirst. "Such a dumb name… Why would anyone call you Dogmeat?"

Preston observed the parts of the dog's fur that had begun to mat from drying blood. Preston had done most of the killing on their way out of Corvega assembly, but he couldn't claim that every kill had been his; the dog had gnashed its fair share of raiders on their way out.

Recalling what details he could, Preston had watched the dog nearly disappear between trailers and tall brush once the shooting had begun. Raiders had gone down, brought low to the grass in surprise attacks from a hound they had not seen below. In the chaos, the raiders hadn't noticed some of their friends getting their throats torn open. The two times that Preston had almost lost his position, Dogmeat had been there to make the fight fair just long enough for Preston to retreat back into more favorable cover.

Preston glanced down to his body. His clothes, and some of his skin, was stained in blood… But come to think of it, none of it was his. He hadn't suffered a single injury on his way out. That didn't just seem unlikely to him, that seemed impossible. Yet here he was, suffering only the pains of road weary feet and the pangs of thirst and hunger. "Should have eaten that steak before we went on our rampage, huh boy?"

Dogmeat didn't bother to raise his head this time, though Preston noted one of the dog's ears did quirk in Preston's direction. Preston turned his head away from Lexington, looking instead to the road to Concord. "We'll bury Sturges and Marcy," Preston informed Dogmeat. Talking to the dog felt leagues better than talking to himself or, worse, not talking at all. "What's left of them at least. They died on the third floor, so… Hopefully nothing wild caught the smell of their bodies. Then, we'll…"

We'll what? He thought. We'll follow the prophecy of an old woman forced to take so many drugs she wasn't sure what planet she was on?

In her final moments, Mama Murphy- already delirious from the schlew of chemicals that Jared had forced into her body- had Preston give her a canister of Jet to wash down a long and undoubtedly weary life. He wasn't sure why he'd agreed to give her one last hit. Perhaps it was because she was dying already. Perhaps it was because a part of him wanted to believe she was- in some way- prophetic.

The sight. That's what she called it. Something straight out of a pulp comic, absolute nonsense, nothing but drug induced visions that made sense only inside the mind of she whom sucked on the barrel of a Jet canister. But she was right about Dogmeat. Preston looked to the hunched body of the German shepherd, who lifted his head as no small amount of slobber and gray water dripped from his muzzle.

Mama Murphy had been right about Dogmeat, but Preston shuddered at the thought that she might be correct about everything else. On their second night having fled from Quincy, Sturges had confided in Preston that he'd only contacted the Minutemen due to a prophetic warning that Mama Murphy had given. The residents of Quincy had ignored her ravings. Sturges, too, wanted to disregard them. But… He didn't. A gut feeling, maybe. Looking at Dogmeat, Preston was starting to understand what that trusting instinct felt like; putting one's faith in impossible visions of the future felt a little less impossible today than it did a month ago.

When Preston had put that canister of Jet in her hand, Mama Murphy had taken her final hit. What followed should have been regarded as dying insanity. Should have…

The canister fell away from Murphy's aged lips, a trail of Jet smoke slipping through her teeth. The industrial pod in Corvega assembly melted away, along with Preston's beaten, depraved, and worrying face. She slipped into that cool blackness that came before the Sight.

When the darkness parted like curtains on a stage, she found herself hovering over Boston. She watched a steel bird attempt to rip a mechanical worm from the earth. It tore Boston- the Commonwealth as a whole- to pieces with its talons as it dug, deeper and deeper. It did not care what it destroyed in its pursuit. The worm, all the while, squirmed and writhed, narrowly avoiding each swipe of the talon.

All the while, raiders- human, unshrouded by the usual metaphors of the Sight- marched in a kind of organization that horrified Mama Murphy. They dawned strange laser rifles and fired beams of energy upon anyone in- or even near- their path. While the steel bird and the worm tore Boston to pieces, these raiders feasted on what remained. A shrouded figure stood above the raiders, cloaked in darkness.

When Murphy had turned her gaze from the shrouded figure back to the raiders, they had turned into an army of ants. When the steel bird had fallen low, forced to try and use its beak when talons failed, the ants ascended its legs. It squawked, struggled, and swiped scores of ants into oblivion. In the chaos, the worm buried itself deeper into the earth.

This, Mama Murphy knew, was what could be. Her vision reset, back to the steel bird and its first attempt to unearth the worm. Now she saw what she had hoped to see. She saw Preston, a dog at his side, standing vanguard above the city. There was another, a shadowy hand, that played tricks on the worm and the bird. She watched the bird begin to peck out its own insides, trying to tear out some unseen parasite. The worm began to consume its own tail in some kind of ouroboros.

The raiders- the ants- remained, however. They came like a black sea, consuming everything in their path, but their tide broke against Preston and the figures that manifested beside him. Though the Sight preferred to speak to Murphy in metaphors, she was able to pan this part of her vision out in a common kind of sense. What she believed she saw was Preston leading the Minutemen- reforged by his guiding hand- against the unstoppable tide of raiders that she had unwittingly set in motion; Jared's raiders.

She had seen Jared, too, in the past. She had predicted he would become a monster. He had told her, the first day he'd had her here in Corvega, that she had been right all those years ago. Only when he'd begun to pump her full of Mentats and Psycho, forcing visions that had come with a strength she'd thought for sure would have killed her, did she see just how monstrous he might become. The steel bird hungered for the worm, but Jared's hunger- like any monster's- was insatiable.

She had relayed this final vision- or as much as she felt she could- to Preston. She couldn't see him then, only repeated what she saw and hoped that her body was able to still produce words instead of groans and mumbles. When the curtains had began to draw closed on Boston, she knew this darkness would be without end. She would die within the Sight. She supposed that was only fair.

Preston felt a lick along his fingers that drew his mind back from his thoughts of Mama Murphy and her final vision. His eyes fell down to two trusting orbs that stared back in kind. "Steel birds, ants, mechanical worms… It doesn't make sense."

Dogmeat barked.

Prestoned groaned. "No… The Minutemen are gone. I don't care what she saw. We died in Quincy. Frankly… We died before Quincy. Folk had little faith in us then, and now? Why would they have any faith in us at all? We failed them- I failed them. 'You can't save everyone', that was one of the first things they taught me along with covering fire and how to unjam a rifle. But me? I couldn't save anyone."

Preston hadn't realized he'd begun to cry. Dogmeat stared up at him with the soft, nonjudgmental expression Preston felt only dogs and children could wear. Dogmeat turned his gaze from Preston and looked instead to the road to Concord. He gave a low whine.

Preston followed Dogmeat's gaze and sighed. "... Right. Got a job to do, no time to stop and feel sorry for myself. If I can't save them, at least I can honor what's left of them. Right? Plus… Maybe there's a diner or something in Concord I missed. Could use a drink…" Preston rose from the roadside guardrail, bending low enough to run his hand along the top of Dogmeat's head. The dog seemed pleased- elated, even- at the touch. He barked again.

"... At least I saved you, didn't I?" Preston mused, though a part of him wondered who had saved whom.

It was almost dark when Preston had returned to Concord. The bodies of the raiders that had fallen in the street were nowhere to be seen, though blood trails seemed to show that some creature had dragged their corpses to a service entrance that descended under the town. Preston, having common sense, had no desire to determine what the fate of those corpses had been. The sniper that he'd shot on the roof opposite the Museum of Freedom was the only body that remained. Much to Preston's fortune, their body was a trove of supplies; a bolt action rifle, a pocket full of bullets, radroach jerky, and- most importantly- a plastic bottle full of water. Preston tried, and failed, not to eat and drink his fill then and there.

The bodies of Marcy and Sturges were still where they'd fallen in the office of the museum. The weeks had not been kind, their bodies well on their way to putrification. Preston wanted to vomit, though the thought of losing what little food and water he had in him was unacceptable enough to ignore his nausea- mostly, anyway. He drug their bodies behind the church adjacent to the museum, found a shovel, and buried them in two graves marked only with sticks.

Preston's body ached and he'd found himself both hungry and thirsty once again from his exertions. With the day's labor having begun with a firefight and having ended with a double burial- a day of trekking in the sun sandwiched somewhere in between- Preston was sure that he'd be able to find sleep regardless of his body's needs. Preston had looked to Dogmeat- who'd sat on his paws and watched Preston bury those he'd failed to save- and told his sole companion that he'd look for food and water in the morning.

When Preston had climbed to the church's tower, figuring it was as safe a place as any to rest his head for the evening, he'd gazed out over the moonlit wasteland. Sleep, his only friend beyond Dogmeat, had nearly found Preston when an orange glow caught his eye. A fire burned in the distant west. Some faint recollection to a map of settlements he'd been shown back when there still were Minutemen came to him, reminding him that a farm was somewhere in that direction.

Preston, his body ailing from malnutrition and weary from a lack of sleep, did not hesitate in the slightest as he picked up his newfound rifle and descended from the tower.

At a moment's notice, Preston had begun to sprint westward.