For fans of the original Child of Atom, and for new readers as well, I present Child of Atom 2: The Raptors of Ronto.

Read the Original Child of Atom here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119444-child-of-atom/

--Continuing the saga of Dameon and Chloe from the swamps of Point Lookout to the Plains of Ronto, this story is a sequel (expansion pack) to Fallout: Child of Atom--

Part I: Point Lookout

Chapter 1: House of Wares

Madame Panada clicked her long, wavy nails across the slick slate countertop of her wasteland boutique. A humid, swirling wind blew into the carnival stand from deep within the bogs, filling the old shooting gallery and ski ball pavilion with the rank aroma of rotting vegetation and seeping bio gas. She turned her eyes lazily to the old protectron unit she trusted to guard her inventory and fiddled with her long, greasy hair that hung in dread locks down past her shoulders.

The protectron's large, metallic body creaked as it swiveled back and forth on rusty joints, following the erratic path of an empty popcorn box, blown by the restless wind. The large blinking light that that made up the robot's face had faded to a dull yellow; it would need a new MF battery in a few months.

Ms. Panada scrunched her brow at the thought. It was getting increasingly difficult to get electronic components out in this backwater. Fewer and fewer visitors had been coming to Pilgrim's Landing ever since Tobar had disappeared, all those years ago. It had been nearly two weeks since she had seen a customer and they had nothing of value to trade.

Ms. Panada let out a sigh and considered getting the old tarp and closing up shop for the night before the bog men began howling.

The sun was already dipping below the top of the ancient Ferris wheel. The old metal lattice work groaned loudly as a seat high up on the wheel twisted in the wind.

"Hello?"

Ms. Panada nearly jumped at the voice. Her old, tired eyes instantly swelled and glassed over with fear as she stared wide-eyed at the young girl who must have snuck over silently to her stand.

The girl couldn't have been older than a teenager. Her face was soft and fresh, a world's away from the regulars; rugged mountain men who passed by while clawing their way down the coast. This girl looked like she had never gotten dirty; her face was polished to a milky ivory with slightly blushed cheeks. Her eyes were a bright and shimmering green. She was wearing a long black wanderer's robe that obscured her body, cloaking her figure all the way down to her feet. The girl's head and silky, brown hair were likewise hidden behind a dark cloth hood.

"Hello?" the girl repeated in a softer, gentler voice.

"Uh, welcome weary traveler. . .to Madame Panada's House of Wares. I have everything you could ever need."

The girl gave a demure smile, "I'm looking for my sister. We look a lot alike, except she's blond. She's a year younger then me. Have you seen anyone like that pass through here?"

Ms. Panada's eyes were drawn to a green shape near the back of the girl's hood. The tips of several broad leaves poked out from the back of the girl's hair, just behind her left ear, as if she had stuck a twig behind it. The leaves then fanned out into the back of the hood like a crown.

As Ms. Panada continued to study the strange leaves she noticed a black shadow off to her left, a dark figure that seemed to be moving towards her stand while remaining out of the protectron's line of sight.

"Do you have a travel companion?" Ms. Panada stared intently at the shape as her hand slowly reached down below the counter to a waiting snub nosed pistol.

The girl turned her head around for a second, "yes, don't worry he's with me."

Ms. Panada bit her lip, "have him come over. I can foresee that he would like to trade . . .and uncover your face, child. You have nothing to fear."

The girl looked down at the ground. It was an old boardwalk made of oak boards, bleached white by the incessant sun. The girl's feet were so small they almost slipped between the boards down to the sandy beach.

"Have you seen her?" the girl looked up again, her eyes pleaded with the old woman.

The shadow off in the distance moved closer. Ms. Panada could make out its features. It was a large man wearing a black wanderer's robe identical to the girl's. He had a dusty assault rifle strapped to his back. His face was obscured by his draping hood, which billowed in the intermittent wind. He glanced back and forth as he slowly approached the shop.

"Hello sir," the protectron dumbly hummed to the approaching figure, it began to shift its massive weight with tiny steps, tracking the man's movements with its bulky head.

"Welcome traveler to Madame Panada's House of Wares," Ms. Panada automatically began her usual greeting routine, "I have everything you could-"

The man peeled off his hood. Ms. Panada instantly took a step back into her cubby, horrified. The man's face was horribly mangled. He looked ghoulish if not a full blown ghoul. Deep black, purplish scars criss-crossed his nose, cheeks, and chin as if he had been savagely mauled by an animal and his torn flesh had slowly rotted on the bone. Half of the skin that remained on his face looked like a porous, white rock with the consistency of concrete or plaster of paris. His hair was patchy and gray, revealing several areas of scalp that were covered in black and white sores.

Grains of the hard white material that blotched the man's skin sloughed off like dust or dry ash as he tried to force his face into a stern expression.

His icy blue eyes glimmered in the setting sun like gem stones.

"Have you seen the girl?" he hissed.

"I. . .I" Ms. Panada was transfixed, she forgot about the pistol and put her hand back down on the counter, "some bad men came by here a couple of weeks ago. They wanted to trade slaves but I told them I have no use for slaves so they went down to the smugglers near Dove Delta."

"She was with them?" the girl chimed in.

"They didn't show me their stock," Ms. Panada coughed into her arm and wiped her mouth with a shaky hand, "only new people I've seen in months."

"Where's the delta?" the man said slowly.

Ms. Panada pointed to the setting sun, "I wouldn't go in the dark. Lots of bog men prowling."

"Bog men?" the girl mulled over the words.

"Swamp folk," Ms. Panada glanced out towards the heavily forested bogs.

The disfigured man nodded to himself and then put his arm on the girl's robed shoulder. He eased the girl back with his touch and the two strangers began to walk away from Ms. Panada without saying a word.

"You. . .you're not going to trade?" Ms. Panada called out; "Travelers, I have everything you could ever. . ." her voice was drowned out by a gust of wind that blew the popcorn boxes and boardwalk debris out towards the bay.

Chapter 2: Pilgrim's Landing
The lonely chimes of a far away buoy graded on Chloe's ears as it bobbed up and down in the restless water. Trying to distract herself from the noise, Chloe studied the skyline of Pilgrim's Landing. The old town was small, only a few blocks long and one block wide. Most of it was taken up by the old carnival. The bright, gaudy colors of the carnival stands, funnel cake pavilions, and dusty, long abandoned rides unnerved her as she followed in Dameon's wake while he scoped out the path ahead.

Chloe paused in her step to stare at the contorted face of a plastic horse, frozen mid stride, on the edge of a decaying merry-go-round . Chloe had never seen a living horse. This horse's graceful, muscular body clashed with its painful facial expression, as it seemed to be trying to gnaw through its reigns to freedom.

Chloe heard Dameon's footsteps come to a stop and she leaned into a building next to her, trying to duck out of sight.

Dameon knelt down on the boardwalk and tried to see through the falling darkness. In front of him, less than twenty yards away, was a mole rat. Its long gray whiskers twitched up and down at his unseen presence. The animal then rose up on its hind legs and sniffed the air, shooting its head back and forth, tracking Dameon's strange scent.

Dameon left his gun on his back and his knife in its hilt; he crept silently off the boardwalk, onto the sand and the soft grass, closing the distance to the creature in moments.

The mole rat ground its long front teeth together with a nervous pvssyr and went back to tearing at the soft earth and breaking apart grass shoots.

As it was still distracted, Dameon pounced on the mole rat, putting his discolored hand around the back of the creature's neck and lifting it into the air.

The mole rat was heavy, forty pounds of teeth and muscle; it squealed and snapped its long teeth with a hiss. Dameon threw the rat down on the ground on its back. As it tried to flick over, he grabbed the rat by the jugular and squeezed hard as it began to writhe in his iron grasp.

As the rat kicked its legs, the gray skin on Dameon's hand began to crack, small streams of dust trickled down from between his fingers. Unfazed, he tightened his grip until the rat was motionless, and then casually tossed it off to the side.

"We could eat that," Chloe shuffled up to Dameon from behind a building corner.

Dameon tried to wince his hard face, "I hate the taste of mole rat."

"My mother taught me how to cook it right, you need to marinade it in wonder glue," Chloe leaned over the dead animal and fiddled with her hood.

"I'd rather just eat the glue," Dameon scoffed and peered out north of the beach, into the enveloping darkness of the swamps. He heard a strange noise that sounded like a loud belching or garbled moaning. He stared at Chloe, telling her with his eyes to stay back as he darted towards the woods.

The burping sounded less human as Dameon approached. As he got closer he realized he had been hearing gas bubbling up from the muddy bogs. As the foul gas reached the surface, it broke through the mud in soapy bubbles, which gurgled as they burst in the hot night air.

Dameon swirled a long white finger in the bubbling mud. It was warm to the touch. The bubbling gas reeked of methane.

"It's nothing," he called back to Chloe, while standing back up.

Deep off in the woods he heard what sounded like footsteps.

Dameon put his hand back onto the grip of his rifle, "let's stay by the water."

After a few mintues of walking, Dameon paused in the sand. A few hundred feet ahead of him, on the beach just a few yards up from the tide line, he could see a half dozen green, military style tents, set up one next to another in a square formation. Small slivers of golden light poked through the tents' front flaps and bathed the site in dull amber light. Dameon could hear muffled voices echoing up the beach between the breaking of waves as he nervously went to take the gun off his back and scope out the encampment.

Before he freed his weapon, Dameon noticed a man walking up the beach to his left, coming in his direction. The man was short, clad in segments of dark green combat armor and military boots, capped with a green, metal helmet. He paused in his step and looked away from the waves up towards the dune where Dameon was perched.

Dameon froze and tried to kneel behind the dune. The man took one more step forward before pausing. He then ran at full speed toward the tents.

[censored]!

Dameon shot up and shuffled back to Chloe, gesturing for her to run off towards the woods.

Chapter 3: Smuggler's End

A group of well armed and armored men ran out from the tents like swarming hornets, forming a defensive a line ahead of Dameon and Chloe.

Dameon scanned the men through the darkness and motioned for Chloe to get down. While he was edgy, Dameon was intrigued that the men, likely the smugglers, hadn't opened fire – he was now well in range.

Dameon kept his gun on his back and decided to approach the tents and the smugglers at a slow, deliberate pace.

A taller smuggler, in a complete set of jungle green combat armor took a step forward from the line, craned his neck for a better look at the approaching stranger, and then waived his arms down as a signal for the others to lower their weapons. They did so begrudgingly, keeping their fingers on their triggers.

"Hello there stranger," the smuggler in front called out. He had a high voice and made an exaggerated motion waiving Dameon forward.

Dameon approached slowly, while Chloe remained hunkered down a few hundred feet behind him; ready to bolt out into the thick, swampy woods should things go awry.

As Dameon came closer to the smugglers the pale moonlight reflected brightly off the white patches on his face.

The smugglers murmured to one another and again shifted as if they were going to attack, until they were stopped by the leader out in front.

Dameon could see the lead smuggler's face now. He had shortly cropped red hair, thin pink lips, and a stocky frame. His dark brown eyes caught the moon light and seemed to glow. Sweat glistened on his face from the humidity.

The lead smuggler leaned over and whispered something to one of the smuggler's next to him, which seemed to satisfy the edgy man.

As the lead smuggler took a step forward, Dameon realized he must be slightly drunk; he had an uneven, unbalanced gait. The smuggler studied Dameon's profile for a second. He then pressed his lips together into a forced smile as Dameon removed his hood.

While the leader kept his cool, the others nearly gasped. The leader waived for the others to keep still as they stared at Dameon's hideous face.

"Ah. . .unusual traveler. I promise you, there's nothing to fear," the leader grabbed the twitching barrel of a rifle that one of the more nervous smugglers had begun to point in Dameon's direction and shoved it forcefully down to the ground.

The leader then walked forward and extended his hand to Dameon for a handshake.

"My name is Orleans," he reluctantly took Dameon's gnarled, dry hand and then waived to the darkness behind Dameon in Chloe's direction.

"I'm Dameon."

"And who is that girl out there? Your daughter?" Orleans half laughed and then glanced over his shoulder, back to his nervous men.

"Chloe," Chloe called out, she kept her face hidden under her hood as she slowly rose to her feet.

Orleans leaned into Dameon, "you a ghoul then?" he half whispered, "or well on your way?"

"Do I look like a ghoul?" Dameon tried to force his stiff face into a wry smile.

"Well, you look like . . . well not exactly like any ghoul I've ever seen," Orleans shrugged, "doesn't really matter to me though. I'm a very tolerant man," he clapped his hands together, "come on then, join me for a drink inside. Don't want to be fumbling around out here at night with all those bog men creeping about."

Dameon studied the other smugglers nervously.

"I told you, nothing to fear," Orleans walked back through his men, parting them with his presence. He then walked over to one of the large green tents and stooped to get inside; "well?" he called back to Dameon.

"Chloe," Dameon waived the girl over.

(********************************************************************)

The inside of the smuggler's tent was packed with boxes of ammo, food, and old machine parts. They were neatly stacked together or laid out into long spreads on several tables that dotted the tent. At the far corner of the tent was an old computer monitor and a few damaged books. The tent floor was yellowish sand. Chloe's feet sank down into the moist sand, and she began to nervously bury her boot toes.

A thin sheet of red linen divided most of the tent in half. Chloe could see a young, dark haired woman lying prone behind the sheet, tossing and turning on a dirty cot.

Dameon had to squint once he entered the tent; his eyes took a while to adjust to the brightness. The tent was illuminated by several gas lamps that hung down from support struts. A wind howled outside and made the tent walls vibrate noisily.

"What is this place?" Chloe murmured as two smugglers ducked into the tent behind her.

"Smuggler's End," Orleans smiled and snatched a bottle from on top of a wooden crate. He unscrewed its cap and pressed it to his lips, "was some sort of triage camp for plague victims before the war. Abandoned when we set up shop here."

"Catchy name," Dameon studied the cargo scattered around the tent.

"Yeah," Orleans leaned back into a folding chair and sat down, "so. . .make yourselves comfortable friends. . .moonshine?" Orleans offered the bottle to Dameon.

Dameon took a shallow sip from the bottle, surprised Orleans would be comfortable sharing it with him. He was unnerved by Orleans overly friendly demeanor. No one was this nice.

"Are you cold in here or something?" Orleans looked up at Chloe and motioned for her to remove her hood.

Chloe instantly looked to Dameon who shook his head.

"Where are the two of you from?" Orleans took his bottle back from Dameon as the two other smugglers half relaxed.

The girl behind the curtain moved up in her bed so that she could see past the curtain and stare at the strangers.

"We're from D.C., refugees from the war," Dameon said coldly.

"Ah," Orleans nodded, "heard the enclave hit D.C. a few months back. Even harder than the last time. Luckily, they never get down here."

"We're looking for a girl," Dameon started, "her sister."

Orleans stared at Chloe, "sister huh?"

"Have you seen her?" Chloe asked.

Orleans stood up from his chair and walked over to Chloe, "first off, what's with the hood?"

Chloe again turned to Dameon, who looked away this time. She pulled down her hood.

Chloe's long brown hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail. From the back of her head, where her spine met the bottom of her skull, three large brown branches no wider than inch a piece jutted out from her skin. As they stuck out from her body, they split into dozens of tiny twigs full of verdant leaves. Another thicker and more knotted, leafless branch extended out from a bit lower down her back, while a tiny sapphire red flower curled around the back of her left ear. Down the right side of her neck several small black and golden seed pods were fused to her skin, just starting to germinate.

The girl behind the curtain let her jaw drop. The two other smugglers and Orleans were taken completely aback.

"Uh. . ." Orleans coughed and looked away for a second, "remind. . .remind me to stay the [censored] out of the capital wasteland, huh?" He scratched his thin red hair.

Chloe closed her eyes to his reaction, "she looks like I did. . .our faces I mean, they look a lot alike,"

"Honey I've seen bog men, I've seen mutants, I've seen ghouls, and I've seen trogs. Seen damn near everything, but if she had a [censored] tree growing out of her spine I would definitely remember that," Orleans shook his head and went back to his chair to sit down.

"The old gypsy woman down by the pier said she might have been taken here," Dameon interjected.

Orleans svcked in his cheeks and then nodded, "Say le ve. . .I might know something about that."

"Well," Dameon glanced at the smugglers standing behind him.

Orleans was silent. The other smugglers moved around the tent. There were two of them, one man and one red haired woman, dressed in identical green combat fatigues. The woman gave an angry glare to Dameon while she uncorked a bottle of wine. The man was busy trying to light a cigarette.

Orleans stayed mum, his eyes following Chloe's gaze to the girl behind the curtain.

"My wife," Orleans interjected, "Trisha," he pointed to the girl.

The girl pushed herself up to a sitting position on the cot. She had long flowing black hair and friendly eyes. Her face was dirty with sand and grime. She gave a docile waive.

Dameon looked her up and down. Both he and Chloe's gaze shot down to the girl's legs. The girl had no feet. Her legs ended in flat stumps just below her knees and above her shorts. It looked as if she had been given a double amputation.

Chloe swallowed her spit.

"Don't dare think I would mutilate such a pretty thing," Orleans followed their gaze, "she was a slave. . .tried to escape attempt from the Pitt. Stepped on a mine, they left her there on the bridge like trash or trog food. I happened to pass her by on my way down the Allegheny."

"Sorry," Chloe dumbly muttered, embarrassed for staring.

"Most people don't get married any more, especially mercs like me. But I'm traditional like that," Orleans cleared his throat and snatched a chunk of cold Mireluk claw meat off a dirty plate.

"The girl," Dameon said irritated.

"Like I said," Orleans began while looking at the Mireluk claw, "I can help you, but I want your help first. I need a favor."

"What do you want?"

"You," Orleans pointed to Dameon, "you look like a seasoned wastelander. I need your help opening a safe. No one else here has the necessary . . .skill."

Dameon turned to Chloe. She gave him a passive shrug.

Dameon exhaled, "I'll see what I can do."

Chapter 4: The People's Bank of Point Lookout

Chloe studied her neck line in the mirror. She ran her fingers over a few seed pods that jutted out from her skin and then dug her fingernails down into them, ripping them off of herself and flicking them onto the floor with a wince.

She had spent the night with Dameon in one of the empty smuggler's tents. At sunrise, he and Orleans had walked back out to Pilgrim's Pier, leaving Chloe to wander the camp.

She didn't trust the various unnamed smugglers, so she spent most of the morning in Orlean's tent with Trisha, who was slow to rise, murmuring to herself in her sleep.

Chloe was preening her body, removing any new foliage that hadn't already rooted itself down to her bones. As she hiked up the bottom of her robe to her waist, the red headed smuggler walked into the tent and gave her an annoyed glare.

"Did you or that zombie bring anything to eat with you? I'm sick of Mireluk and punga, and its been weeks since we got to knock off a boat or ferry," the redhead fiddled with her hair.

Chloe shook her head. She was examining a long green stalk, the stem of a large fern that had begun to grow out of her upper thigh just below her panty line. She wrapped her fingers around the fern leaves, closed her eyes, and pulled the whole stem out with a quick tug.

"Oooow," Chloe's hand shook as she stared at the long green stalk, the bottom third of which was soaked deep red with blood.

"Jesus Christ," the redhead gagged and looked green, as if she would vomit. She ducked out of the tent, while Trisha continued to watch Chloe prune herself, amused to see a pretty girl more disfigured than she was.

(********************************************************************)

Dameon spit in the sand next to the body of the mole rat he had strangled the day before. Its head was broken and bloody, something had chewed off its face during the night. Its skull was caved in, and brain matter was scattered in the sand and the grass.

Dameon bit his hard tongue and stood up from his knees.

Orleans had paused next to the boardwalk, waiting for Dameon to catch-up.

"Friend of yours?" Orleans called over.

Dameon picked up his pace and caught up with Orleans who motioned him over to a crumbling building, only a little ways away from the House of Wares.

"So," Orleans continued to walk, "what the hell happened to you? I've never seen rads do that to a man."

Dameon smiled to himself and shook his head, "I. . .spilled somebody's science experiment. Got all over me."

"Damn," Orleans scratched his chin and cut across a narrow alley over to the building, "the girl too?"

"Yeah. . .what about you, what's your story?"

"My story?"

"You from New Orleans?"

"Naw'lands?" Orleans laughed, "no, I was raised down near the Broken Banks. But my mother was from Orleans. Been running crews up the coast for years," he pushed open the building's heavy steel door.

Dameon studied the building. There were several decorative Corinthian columns that went down the walls on each side of the door. Right above the door itself the words "People's Bank of Point Lookout," were chiseled into the wall.

The old bank was dank inside and moldy. Sunlight came in through hundreds of cracks in the old walls. The front desk, which was once made of wood, had now petrified into grayish stone. The computer monitors that dotted each teller's desk had gotten wet at some point in the past and were damp and internally rotted.

Orleans hopped past the front counter towards the back vault; he motioned for Dameon to follow him.

Dameon glanced back to the front of the bank. An old, faded yellow poster hung on the wall. It was a mug shot of an Asian woman, maybe in her late thirties. He hopped over the desk and followed Orleans into the back vault.

"Tada," Orleans pointed forwards. The vault was large, as big as an average master bedroom. The door into the vault, two feet of thick steel, was open, rusting on its hinges for the past two hundred years. However, all the valuables were locked into safety deposit boxes which were stacked one on top of another like little lockers on the vault's far wall. Just a bit back from the wall was a large desk terminal, smaller than the ones outside and still in pristine condition.

In the center of the rows of deposit boxes was one inordinately large box, almost the size of man. Orleans was eagerly pointing towards it.

"That's the safe?" Dameon coughed, "I can't open that. It doesn't even have a lock on it to pick."

Orleans nodded. He then stepped over to the terminal and flicked it on.

"Welcome. . .Bankcom Secure Teller. Please enter your password," the monitored hummed in a cold metallic voice.

Orleans looked excitedly at Dameon who just shrugged confused, "open sesame?"

"Not quite," Orleans tapped on the key board.

Xìn tian weng.

"Password accepted. . .please provide voice authentication," the monitor creaked.

Dameon waited for Orleans' next move, but new Orleans stood still.

"You need the voice of someone who's probably been dead for 200 some years? Good luck. Impossible,' Dameon scratched what was left of his graying hair.

Orleans smiled, "exactly what I thought," he walked over to the vault entrance door and pointed to the wall, "it's a big puzzle. I like puzzles. We were hitting the boats that came down the bay for a few weeks, hunkered down in our camp, when I came across this vault while scavenging. Thought I just needed the password, so I started digging around town. According to the bank's records, or what's left of them, that deposit box belonged to Ms. Wan Yang. Same person whose face is plastered all over the town as a Chinese spy. The terminals at the naval intelligence building a block or so away say she was picked up right before Armageddon. She was supposed to meet a contact in town. I found where the contact was staying and got the password off his body. Thought I was done after weeks and weeks of keeping my restless crew holed up here."

"All for not," Dameon began to leave.

"According to those military records Yang was posing as a USGS mineral survey agent, scoping out natural resources all over the US and Canada. Maybe so the Chinese would know what to plunder."

"I don't see how this involves me."

Orleans pulled a holotape out of his pocket and flicked it on

"This is Dr. Caroline Saunders, USGS project chief. I have selected four dig sites around the marshes to test for concentrations of bio gas and possible mineral exploitation. I have assigned excavation pit 1 to myself, pit two to George Lido, pit 3 to Ms. Yang, and-"

Orleans clicked the holotape off, "seems all the USGS engineers left audio logs. Out of sheer coincidence I saw the old gypsy selling one. Gave me the idea to hunt for Yang's. The holotapes are down inside the excavation pits with the crews' equipment. We located each one of the pits out in the swamps."

"Then why don't you have the tape already?" Dameon paused.

"Lost four men in the first pit. Lethally irradiated down there. The first three men didn't even make it out. The last guy did, but died within a few minutes. It was the wrong pit. I think I figured out which pit was Yang's but I've run out of 'volunteers' to go down and check it out."

"So that's why you want me?"

"Haven't seen any friendly ghouls out here, just feral swamp ones. Don't know if you're even a ghoul but I figured I'd give you a shot."

"You want me to crawl into some irradiated muck hole and look for the holotape."

"Exactly."

"You could have just told me about this," Dameon scoffed, "instead of dragging me here."

Orleans shrugged, "I have a flair for the dramatic, thought you'd be more amenable when you saw the size of the safe."

"How do I know you don't put a bullet in me once I crawl out of the pit?" Dameon chuckled.

"Handshake on it good enough for you?" Orleans laughed back, "Look, I could have been an [censored] about it, thrown you in the pit, threatened the girl, etc. But I'm not an [censored]. . .thought I'd get farther with honey than vinegar anyway. So come on, on top of the information about the missing sister I'll give you ten percent of what's in that safe. Don't tell me you aren't intrigued as to what goodies those spies squirreled away."

"How do I know you even have info about her?" Dameon clenched his teeth.

"Hmmm. . .little blond right? Could read and write. Good at math? I think she worked for a merchant or caravaner before," Orleans watched Dameon's expression change, "so what do you say? You're rad proof anyway, right? No skin off your nose," Orleans winced at the inapt expression.

"I'm. . ." Dameon paused and began to smile, "rad resistant."

Chapter 5: Survey Pit Pt.L.-3
"I like your hair," Trisha looked up from her punga breakfast and smiled to Chloe.

"Thanks," Chloe svcked down a nuka-cola and stretched her arms. She was still wearing her wanderer's robes; her hood was pulled down revealing the leafy outgrowths from her spine. Every now and then Chloe glanced longingly at a mirror that hung on the far wall.

While Chloe had never felt that she looked particularly beautiful, her current form disgusted to her to the point that when she had last seen her reflection in a pool of stagnant, irradiated water, she had begun to cry uncontrollably, picturing herself a tree or bush forever rooted to the ground.

Chloe heard a rustling and tensed up expecting another smuggler to enter the tent.

"You don't have to worry," Trisha yawned, "as long as Orleans says your okay they won't do anything to you."

Chloe nodded and smiled at Trisha, "How long have you and Orleans been married?"

"Haha," Trisha laughed and rolled her eyes, "long enough."

Chloe was confused by her reaction, "what do you mean?"

"I don't know. Long enough that I wish I wasn't."

Chloe squinted at her, "Why, does he mistreat you?"

Trisha hardened her face, "No. He's just a control freak. Everyone has to do what he wants, always in charge. Always have to laugh at his jokes, humor him. I'm. . ." she glanced down to her missing feet, "just easy for him to control. I'm not running away anytime soon. . ."

Chloe went to peek out the tent door, "Dameon and I could help you," she heard growing murmurs outside.

Trisha didn't consider it, "No, he may be controlling but Orleans is the only person who gives a [censored] about me. I can't take care of myself, that's obvious. At least someone is willing to take care of me," Trisha laid back down as Chloe ducked under the tent flap and walked outside.

(***********************************************************************)

"Take John and Dani then," Orleans pointed to the red headed woman and mean looking older man.

Dameon looked at the two of them displeased, he then saw Chloe coming out of the tent and he walked over to her.

"You're going to have to stay here for a little while longer," he pushed the flower next to her ear aside and whispered softly.

"Did he tell you what happened to Emily?"

"Not yet. He wants me to retrieve something for him. It's in an irradiated pit. I'm the only one who can do it without dying."

Chloe glanced at the assembled smugglers. Orleans was waiting for a reaction from Dameon.

"I don't like this. If she's nearby we could lose her by wasting time," Chloe muttered.

"I should only take a few hours. I think Orleans knows where she went. If these smugglers make you edgy, keep your gun out, let them know you have it," Dameon tapped Chloe's side, a bit up and left from her belly button. He'd given her a small .32 pistol after they left the capital and she had kept it hidden under layers of robes ever since.

"All ready?" Orleans called Dameon over with a hand gesture. He removed a rifle that was hanging on a sling over his shoulder and began to pry open a tin of Spam.

"You aren't going?" Dameon hesitated.

"No, I'm looking after the fort today. Got to send the other grunts out on a hunting foray. You've got John and Dani, two of my best," Orleans waived Dameon on.

Dameon spit on the beach and looked out into the wooded swamps.

A tree creaked somewhere deep in the darkness

(************************************************************************)

Dameon looked up at the sky; the sun would set in a few hours which made him nervous. He was unfamiliar with the swamps, and was with unfamiliar people. The two smugglers were unnervingly edgy and hostile. He couldn't wait to part company and was eager to get this all over with.

"Are we almost there then?" Dameon paused and leaned into a tree. He dug around in a pocket on his robe, straining to find a flask or a cigarette, anything to cool his nerves.

John, the older male smuggler had a beet red face and sweat soaked clothes. His armor seemed to be wearing him instead of the other way around.

"Almost there zombie, maybe a half mile or so," John adjusted his briast plate.

Dameon cut in front of John's path and leaned into him menacingly, "I'm not a [censored] zombie, [censored]."

"Get off him," Dani ran up to Dameon, angrily clutching a sub machinegun at her side.

"[censored] off then, both of you," Dameon spat. He went to storm off but noticed something ahead, over a small mud hill, past a narrow creek, and up on a large leafy bern. It was shiny and silver.

The two smugglers didn't notice a thing, they continued to walk forwards for a few seconds until they realized Dameon had frozen in his tracks. They then followed his lead.

Dameon got down on all fours and began to marine crawl down the mud hill into the creek. The irradiated water soaked though his thick robe and made him uncomfortable. The water smelled rank and stale, it was full of decaying leaves and black muck. The creek bottom was soft like living flesh.

Dameon was careful to keep his assault rifle out of the water. He pulled himself over to the other side of the water, up onto the far bank, and peered through a narrow strip of trees to the bern.

The shiny object that had caught his eye was the blade of an axe. The axe was resting upright against a small dead tree. Dameon pulled the rifle from his back and adjusted its scope.

Dani and John stayed behind, on the far side of the creek, not wanting to get wet or muddy. They waited for Dameon to make the first move.

Through the crosshairs of the scope, Dameon could see the excavation pit. A large mound of dirt was piled around the top of it. It was about thirty feet past the axe. Sitting around the hole were two empty folding chairs and a bottle that looked identical to Orleans' bottle of moonshine.

As Dameon focused on the bottle, a large towering figure walked in front of it, turning the whole scope a dull blue.

What the?

Dameon put the rifle down and squinted his eyes. In front of the pit was a large man, well over six feet tall. He was wearing blue overalls, a red plaid shirt, and large yellow boots. His face was deformed with mutant like abscesses and swells. He looked like one of the still born babies Dameon had seen in the Pitt when he was a teenager, with an oversized, misshapen head and bulging, bulbous arms. The creature had an awkward bouncing step. It put its massive hand up to its forehead to shield out the glare of the sun as it scanned the tree line.

Out of nowhere, a slightly smaller, shirtless deformed man clutching a shotgun scampered up next to the giant.

Bog men?

Dameon checked for the smugglers behind him but they seemed to have vanished. He was unsure if they were hiding or had just run off. He began to creep along the ground, inches above the moss and grass, making his way towards the tree with the axe.

"I seeeen something. . . ." the shirtless bog man squinted his gray, protruding eyes, trying to see through the trees past the glare of the creek.

"Mwha?" the giant bog man hocked a huge wad of spit down into the excavation pit oblivious.

The smaller bog man clutched his shotgun with both hands and began to walk towards the tree line with light, deliberate steps. He was sure something was hiding down by the creek. He began to pick up his pace a bit, raising the shotgun up to his chest. He opened his mouth to yell.

Dameon popped out from behind a tree right in front of the bog man's path, axe in hand, and swung the blade as hard as he could at the creature's face. The sharp steel dug in right below the bog man's top teeth and instantly chopped the top half of his head clean off in a shower of blood.

As the dead body slumped forward, the giant bog man realized what had happened and pivoted to charge.

Dameon readied the axe for another blow. He was confident he could take on the unarmed giant. He ran forward and swung the axe handle behind his right side, ready to cleave the bog man in half.

Pop.

Dameon heard the sharp crack of a bullet whiz past his head. It impacted the bog man's shoulder harmlessly. It was followed by another shot that missed and impacted the dirt next to the hole.

In an instant everything went bright white. There was a deafening boom and Dameon was thrown several feet back into the mud.

Dameon shook himself off and looked around wildly for the bog man who had been reduced to chunks of meat by the blast.

"Haha, I got him!" Dani shouted as she and John jogged out of the woods, and up to a dazed Dameon.

"You almost killed me," Dameon face was stone.

"I didn't hit you, I'm a good shot," Dani said defiantly, "don't know what the hell blew up though. . ."

"The gas from the pit, its methane. You can't shoot around the entrance like an idiot; you almost blew me to hell!" Dameon yelled.

"Ease off ghoul, just get in the damn pit and get this over with," John snarled.

"I am not a ghoul!" Dameon kneed John in the groin causing him to collapse onto the ground.

Dani instantly went to point her gun at Dameon who brought his axe crashing down on the weapon, shattering it to pieces.

Dani jumped back and John put his hands in front of his face expecting to be chopped to bits.

"If either one of you says another word to me I will cave your skull in," Dameon glared at the two of them.

As the two smugglers cowered in fear, Dameon slung the axe over his back and walked towards the pit.

He looked down into it, an old rusty ladder led down into the wet, muddy hole.

"Better be worth it," Dameon mumbled as he climbed down the ladder and jumped into the thick irradiated muck.

Chapter 6: Irradiated Muck Hole
"Aww. . .damn it!"

Dameon winced as his dark boots sank down into the soft mud at the bottom of the survey pit until their laces were completely covered and his feet felt cold and wet. It smelled like methane and stinging decay inside of the dank hole. Dameon could hear water from the bogs slowly drip down the earthen walls into large bubbling puddles on the mucky floor.

The survey pit was large, larger then Dameon could actually see. The light that came down from the top only illuminated about a third of the space around him, the rest of the hole was a pitch black backdrop though which Dameon could see nothing. He squinted in the darkness waiting for his eyes to adjust, while slowly walking in place to try to pull his feet free of the svcking muck.

As the visible area of the survey pit slowly came into focus, Dameoncould see that he was standing next to a bloody pile of gore and bones. On either side of him were empty moonshine bottles and several rotting corpses, two of freshly smashed mole rats missing their eyes and snouts, one of a long decaying dog that had turned a putrid lime green with moldy outgrowths, and finally a complete human skeleton, picked clean to its white bones, half buried in the irradiated mud.

Bog men aren't fussy. . .

The horrid odor of the rotting flesh and seeping methane made Dameon dizzy; looking away he put his hand back on the iron ladder for balance and stability.

The radiation in the hole was severe, even for Dameon. It felt like someone had opened a kiln next to his face. Searing heat burned his eyes, forcing him to keep them half closed, while the rads felt like they were baking the patches of normal skin left on his face.

Dameon didn't want to stay down in the hole a second longer than necessary.

Even though his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the pit was much too dark for Dameon to see around. He hadn't expected it to be so large. He looked up towards the top of the ladder.

"Hey, I can't see anything down here. Toss me a light," Dameon called up to the top of the hole.

He waited for a few seconds but there was no response, "I said I can't see [censored] down here! Give me a light!" he hollered.

No one responded from topside. Dameon gritted his teeth. He wondered if the smugglers had just left and gone back to camp or if they were up there laughing and mocking him.

Dameon had the fleeting thought of lighting a match, only to realize he'd be blown to bits by the flammable gas. He considered fumbling his way around the hole in the dark.

Glup.

Dameon heard something drop down into the mud next to his feet from the top of the hole. It sent up a splash of mud, which hit him in the eye. Momentarily stunned, Dameon froze, before wiping his face and kneeling down in the mud to sift through the muck with his fingers. He pulled out a long dark cylinder and realized one of the smugglers had dropped a flashlight down into the hole.

Dameon brushed the mud off its plastic face and nervously clicked the light on, praying it wouldn't cause a spark.

A bright beam of light shot out from the dirty flashlight onto the earth wall opposite Dameon. On the wall was a slim shadow, which seemed to twist in some unperceivable wind. Dameon moved the flashlight around to try and see its source.

The shadow was being cast by a doll hanging down from the pit's ceiling by a rope noose tightly tied around its neck. The doll was a little rag doll a bit over a foot tall, made to look like a young girl with a country-style blue denim skirt, fluffy cotton skin, and black button eyes. It rotated slowly on its noose, giving Dameon the creeps.

Unlike everything else in the hole, the doll was clean, untouched by the dark brown mud.

Ignoring the doll for the moment, Dameon scanned the pit with his flashlight. The hole was mostly empty. On the far side was a metal folding table leaning against the pit's wall. On top of the table was an old ham radio, which at some point in the past must have been linked up to an antenna on the surface. Next to the table were three crates full of containers of bio gas, stacked one on top of the other. The bottom crate had sunken down into the mud so that it was almost completely buried. Next to the crates was a large, moldy particle board box filled with long ruined supplies. The rest of the pit was empty, save the rotting corpses and the eerie talisman.

Dameon walked over to the folding table, it was now barely a foot tall as the legs had sunken down deeply into the muck. He studied it for any sign of the holotape but everything looked ruined and dirty. Dameon then sifted through the crates of bio gas before noting a small package tucked in between the top and middle crates.

Dameon snatched the tiny yellowed package and ripped it open. Inside was a holotape. Dameon shined his flashlight on the square diskette. It felt flimsy and muddy. In the light he could just read the white stenciling on its bottom.

Yang – 3.

Dameon prayed it was still functional and looked up towards the skylight.

The sky was a deep midnight blue; the stars were beginning to twinkle.

Chapter 7: Chinese Forfeiture
"Come on then, let's see what we've got," Orleans was giddy and bright eyed. He was nearly skipping down the boardwalk.

Dameon kept a slower, plodding pace, while Dani passed him by. John had walked back to Smuggler's End while Dameon was still clawing his way out of the mud hole. He had given word to Orleans of Dameon's success and Orleans had intercepted Dameon and Dani out in the woods.

Unable to contain his excitement, Orleans had ushered them off the trail back to camp, instead hurrying them down towards Pilgrim's Pier.

Dameon was tired and wanted to get back to Chloe. For the past two months they had been together nearly every minute while cutting their way down the bay, fueled on by rumors of Emily. Dameon felt uncomfortable without her, like he was missing an appendage. Every now and then he would feel her presence a few feet behind him and he would look back longingly for her, only to see empty darkness.

"Finally we can get out of this [censored] hole," Dani beamed.

She scurried over towards Orleans who swung open the broken door to the People's Bank.

"Well come on then, rapidement. Don't you want to see your share?" Orleans shouted back to Dameon.

Dameon reluctantly trudged up to the door.

"What are you giving him?" Dani stared at Orleans confused.

Orleans motioned for her to wait by the door as Dameon made his way inside, "make sure no one tries to come in," Orleans whispered to Dani.

Orleans then gave a beaming smile to Dameon, "you come with me," Orleans pointed to him, "need someone to help me carry this haul."

While Dani stood irritated by the entrance door, Dameon and Orleans walked into the vault.

Dameon glanced around and handed the holotape over to Orleans, "I'm not even sure it works."

Orleans thumbed the diskette in his thick, dirty fingers, "these things are tough as nails. Maybe tougher. . .nails rust," he shook it off and slipped it into a player.

Unintelligible. . .there are large concentrations of methane at this. . .unintelligible. . .source still unexplained. . . . unintelligible. . .. . . will discuss . . . next month. . .Ozymandias. . .Dr. Wan Yang. . .click.

Dameon furrowed his brow.

"Should be good enough," Orleans tried to sound upbeat.

"What if it isn't?"

Orleans shrugged. He glanced out the vault door to Dani who was peering at the two of them, instead of scanning the outside.

Flustered, Orleans pushed the heavy vault door shut against the wall, shutting himself and Dameon in the vault, "then I'll save myself some time to think of a clever way to get the hell out of here."

"Now tell me where the girl is," Dameon leaned against the wall.

"Patience," Orleans walked over to the vault terminal and began typing on the old keyboard.

"Welcome. . . Bankcom Secure Teller. Please enter your password," the terminal hummed.

Orleans banged on the keys.

"Password accepted. . . please provide voice authentication."

Orleans put the holotape next to the monitor and played the badly damaged diskette. He held his breath after it finished playing.

Orleans and Dameon stood in muted silence for several seconds while the console flashed the word processing in boxy roman type.

"Voice authenticated. Have a pleasant day," the monitor went a blank green and Orleans and Dameon heard the vault door click open.

"This is it!" Orleans clapped his hands together and went to pull open the deposit box door.

"Great," Dameon said in a completely uninterested tone, "now tell me what you know about the girl."

Orleans looked into the vault. He was silent for a moment. He then turned back to Dameon with a completely deadpan expression.

Intrigued, Dameon cocked his wizened head to the side and leaned over, glancing into the huge deposit box.

It was complexly empty save a lonely sheet of yellowed paper that lay on the bottom of the safe.

Orleans began pacing the room with a huge, dumb smile on his face, "two months . . .two [censored] months. And nothing. . .nothing," he sounded as if he wanted to scream but he was keeping his volume muted and almost laughing, "my [censored] crew will eat me alive, tear me to pieces. . .two months," Orleans threw the holotape against the wall, smashing it apart.

It fell to the tile floor with a clank.

Dameon snatched the piece of paper from the deposit box.

Orleans pushed the computer monitor off the table; it fell with a loud crash to the floor, shattering. He then sat down on the table and put his head in his hands, while continuing to laugh hysterically, "TWO [censored] MONTHS!"

Dameon read the piece of paper.

The contents of this safety deposit box are hereby claimed by the United States Government under the Chinese Asset Forfeiture Act, 26 U.S.C.A. § 1421 (2075). Any interested party who wishes to claim such assets as an innocent owner must contact D.I.A. General Wiley, Turtledove Detention Camp, Point Lookout Maryland within 15 days of the date below and must furnish his or her proof of title to said property along with a notarized statement of why such property is not subject to forfeiture under the Act. October 18, 2077.

"The government cleaned it out," Dameon muttered.

"Should have [censored] known," Orleans raised his head back up, "they nabbed her. They must have known the box was here. [censored] stupid," Orleans hissed to himself.

"Where is Turtledove Detention Camp?" Dameon put the sheet of paper in front of Orleans.

"I'm going to have to disappear. . . get out of here before they find out," Orleans scratched his chin, shooting his eyes over to the vault door.

"Where is Turtledove Detention Camp?" Dameon said more loudly.

"Huh?" Orleans heard him for the first time.

"The letter says to contact General Wiley at Turtledove detention camp if you want to claim what was in the safe. They probably took whatever they seized there. It was dated less than a week before the war."

"Turtledove. . ." Orleans' expression went blank; he stared up at the ceiling.

"Look, I already did my part. Just tell me where the girl is. Emily," Dameon's expression turned back to stone. A trickle of dust fell off his cheek.

Orleans' eyes flashed wildly, "huh? Forget the girl, we. . .we can go to Turtledove ourselves, the two of us and-"

"I don't care about the damn safe, where is Emily?" Dameon snarled. His body tensed up for a fight.

"Think of all the caps!"

"Ahh!" Dameon grabbed Orleans by the throat and squeezed it as hard as he could, until it felt like his hands would crumble into sand. Orleans struggled in his unforgiving grip and kicked him several times in the chest but Dameon was completely unaffected, his body rock hard. His blue eyes burned with rage as he slammed Orleans against the steel wall over and over again.

"Where is she!" Dameon screamed.

"Stop! Stop!" Orleans coughed. He shook his head and gagged from the lack of oxygen.

Dameon let him go, and Orleans stood up on wobbly legs.

"I bought the girl, Emily, from a raider named 'Toothpick' for some punga fruit. He said she was from up north. Had her catalogue everything we stole from a boat to make sure the crew got equal shares. Bought a few other slaves from him, they were useless. We used them in the survey pits, my first 'volunteers.' Few days later a group of Talon Mercs came up the bay. We were low on ammo so we traded her to them."

"Why would they want her?" Dameon loomed over Orleans, exhaling into his face.

"Why would any man want a young, pretty girl?" Orleans couldn't help but unconsciously smile.

Dameon punched Orleans in the face harder than he had ever been hit in his life. Harder than the blows he had received as a child from his drunken father.

"This is my life's work. Look at me! This is the only thing left that matters, that keeps me going. WHERE IS SHE!" Dameon picked Orleans up by his armor until his feet were several inches off the ground, and then threw him against the hard safe.

Orleans crumpled to the ground.

Dani began banging on the thick vault door, but Dameon grabbed it and turned the lock shut.

"Two birds with one stone. . ." Orleans tried to say but he began to cough again.

"What?" Dameon hissed as he began to take the bog man's axe off his back.

"We can kill two birds with one stone," Orleans repeated in a whisper.

Dameon kicked Orleans as hard as he could in the stomach with his muddy boot.

"[censored] man, they asked if she could read and write. . .they were going to Quantico."

"What is Quantico?"

Orleans struggled to catch his breath and stand, "It's an old military base. They trained marines there before the war. Talon has been there since god knows when; they use it to train their grunts. I figured they needed a pencil pusher to keep books or something," Orleans spit out a wad of blood from his bleeding gums, "Turtledove is on the way. The highway picks up behind the camp; it should be a straight shot from there."

Dani continued to bang on the door.

Orleans wiped his mouth, "there are slightly shouter routes, but if you come with me to Turtledove I'll guide you through the bogs. The base is full of ghouls and automated defenses. Couldn't get close to it when we scouted it out a few weeks ago. You help me get in there I'll give you 30%."

"I don't care about the safe," Dameon glared at him.

"Well like I said, it's on the way. You're better than any of my crew; most of them are afraid to go into the swamps. They're [censored] on land. The ghouls might even leave you alone. . . you come along and we can take the camp. Then if you're crazy enough you can go on down to Quantico."

Dameon shook his head, "you're [censored] me."

"No," Orleans said defiantly, "that's where they told me they were going."

Dameon mulled over Orleans' words.

"It's maybe a five hours walk from here to Turtledove. We can go now with Dani, she may be a little reckless but she's loyal," Orleans staggered over to the door.

"If we're going I need to get Chloe."

"Let's head up and I'll send Dani back to fetch her. She can meet us once we've stormed the camp so she'll be safe," Orleans rubbed his raw neck.

Dameon put his hood back over his head, "We get her now."

Orleans bit his lip and then nodded slowly, "Then we leave tomorrow morning," he put out a nervous hand to Dameon, "partner. . ."

Dameon hesitated to give him a handshake.

Chapter 8: Trapper's Shack

It took all of Orleans's charisma to prevent the smugglers from tearing him apart once he and Dameon returned to Dove Delta empty handed. In the end, his men were barely dissuaded from mutiny by promises of the rich treasure trove of prewar cargo to be found in Turtledove. Only three of the smugglers agreed to head out to the camp the next morning, the rest were content to wait and see if anyone made it back alive.

Dameon spent the night with Chloe. She had missed him as badly as he had missed her. She was exhausted from preening herself all day, but was unhappy with the results. The new branches shooting out of her back made it painful for her to lie down or sit in a chair. She wanted to be rid of them and begged Dameon to snap them off.

Dameon was extremely uncomfortable doing so. After much pleading, Chloe undressed from the waist up, pulling down her robes and lying on her stomach on a bed. Dameon grabbed the lowest branch on her body, a thick, leafless twig that shot out from her back, and while closing his eyes, he snapped it off just above her skin.

It gave off a sickening crack as it broke apart.

Dameon jumped back, expecting Chloe to scream out in pain, but she was unaffected. She had him tear off the other branches, but Dameon only removed the tips as he was worried that snapping the twigs near her neck could break her spine. He decided to saw them off, but after all the stress of the day, Chloe drifted off to sleep while Dameon was trying to find a suitable saw.

Dameon watched her sleep for hours. He rubbed her naked back with his dry, cracking hands while she shifted in her cot. The whole time he was aching to be able to hold her, caress her, and kiss her. Longingly, he stood up from the cot and caught a glimpse of himself in a wall mirror.

He gave his ugly reflection a hateful glare and fell asleep on the sandy tent floor.

(**************************************)

The large german shepherd lapped up mouthfuls of water from the dirty creek and then paused to pick up its head and sniff the air.

Dani knelt beside the animal and gently stroked the wet hair on its back, "good boy."

Dameon, Chloe, Orleans, Dani, and two other smugglers, Ron and boyish looking man named Scrap, paused by the creek edge to take in their surroundings.

Orleans wiped off his sweaty brow. He disliked being in the swamps as much as anyone in his crew, but he was riding an adrenaline high. To beat the suffocating humidity, he pulled a flask out of his pocket and svcked down a swallow of moonshine before offering it to Dani and Dameon.

Dameon declined; instead he hacked a narrow trail through a tangle of weeds with his axe and then trudged out into the water, following in the dog's path.

"How about you honey?" Orleans offered the bottle to Chloe.

Chloe took a shallow sip of the burning liquid and then coughed, "its really smooth. . .actually."

"Should be, its pure shine, like a hundred and ninety proof," Orleans took another swig.

Chloe and Orleans hopped over the creek at the same time.

"How was my sister when you saw her?" Chloe looked over to Orleans and the other smugglers.

"Looked good. A little gaunt and hungry when we got her," Orleans glanced up at Dameon and then back to Chloe, "I fed her fine."

"Did you talk to her?" Chloe continued.

"A bit. She was happy to be away from the raiders, pretty quiet. A lot like you, actually."

"She was happy?" Chloe asked.

The dog shot out in front of Dameon and began to growl and whine.

"Sure. She wasn't. . .she was fine. The mercs we gave her to were pretty well stocked and aren't psychos like raiders. I'm sure they will take care of her."

"Did she mention me?"

"Like I said, she was pretty quiet. . .resolute," Orleans went to take a final swig but Dameon grabbed him by the arm.

"I would want to be clear headed right now," Dameon had a stern face.

The dog was growling.

Orleans motioned for his crew to get down. He and Dameon crawled up the path ahead which led down to another narrow creek. On the far side of the creek was a small house, maybe twenty feet long, with a long porch that hung just above the water's edge. On the porch were an old radio and a rocking chair. The door to the house swung open and shut in the wind, banging every few moments. The old house's wooden walls were warping off the frame. It looked long abandoned or horribly upkept.

"Scrap and I will scope it out," Orleans whispered to Dameon.

"We should just avoid it," Dameon gritted his worn teeth. He wiped the foul bog water off his face.

"We're traveling too light. Gonna need a lot of ammo for Turtledove. Maybe there's some in the shack. Or something good to eat."

"Look at it. You walk in; you get your head blown off. A trap," Dameon watched the shack door bang against the frame. He noticed an old bloody hand print on the door itself, colored rust orange by age. He peered back at Chloe and the smugglers.

"You don't have to come," Orleans smiled, "I'm no [censored]. Hey Scrap!" Orleans waived him over, "you and I are gonna scout out the shack."

The kid nodded, a bead of sweat dripped down his nose into the thick moss by the bog's edge. He was clutching a bog man's shotgun in his twitchy palms.

"I'll flank the house," Dameon shrugged, "have the rest stay back, just in case."

Dameon slipped down into the creek and went to the right side of the house while Orleans and Scrap jogged through the water over to the porch. Orleans kept his head low and snuck up to the front door. He drew an assault rifle from his side and waived for Scrap to get next to him.

Chloe, Dani, and Ron stayed on the far side of the creek, hiding in the weeds. Ron was guarding the rear, while Dani strained to see the action to the point of blowing her cover. While she was distracted, the dog bolted out towards the other bank. It swam over to the shack but then did a quick turn and ran behind it into the forest.

Orleans watched it disappear, irritated at Dani for letting their only dog stray. He then walked over on his knees to the shack's front door and gingerly pulled the door handle down, pushing the door open slowly.

The door cracked open with a grating creak that made Dameon shudder from the side of the house. He tried to see if the dog was behind the house, but a quick peek revealed nothing. He went back to covering the front door with his rifle.

Orleans held his breath as the door opened wider and wider until it was open wide enough for him to slip inside. He grabbed a sharp piece of mirror wrapped in gauze from his pocket, held it in front of himself, and tilted it into the shack. He studied the reflection from the inside. He could see the living room. There was an old, busted television set, a moldy couch, and a broken bookcase. Some faded pastoral paintings were still hanging on the walls.

Orleans pivoted a bit more. He could see the edge of the kitchen. The stove was open and empty. Insects scurried about on a peeling linoleum floor. He could see a few boxes of shotgun ammo piled on a kitchen countertop.

Orleans motioned for Scrap to follow him as he crept inside.

Dameon watched the men disappear into the shack. He glanced to the opposite bank of the creek and smiled, or rather cracked his hard face to Chloe, whose black robe he could just make out behind a large fern.

The inside of the cabin smelled foul. Something must have died in there. Orleans reached down below his armor and pulled the top of his shirt over his nose to drown out the smell with the scent of his own sweat. He took another step inside and his boots clicked on the hardwood floor. He stayed on his knees as Scrap followed him.

Orleans looked around the dark shack. As he took another look at the couch, he realized a skeleton was sitting on the far end of the sofa in a pile of jumbled bones.

To his right, Orleans could see the rest of the shack, a long hallway that held the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. In the kitchen Orleans saw two ammo boxes lying on a countertop. Past the kitchen, the hall ended in a blind curve that hooked right to the bedroom.

Orleans exhaled and tried to take the lightest steps possible. The kitchen grew closer and closer. Orleans reached it and peered around the corner. He could see the old, red refrigerator, a stove cluttered with pots and pans, and the ammo on the counter. Next to the ammo boxes were several large MF batteries. Orleans licked his lips and leaned up to snatch them all off the counter.

At that moment, he heard shuffling down the hall from the unseen bedroom and what sounded like a voice. Orleans froze in place. Scrap twitched nervously in the living room, eyes darting wildly. He leaned over against the couch to be out of sight from the end of the hall.

Orleans heard footsteps in the other room. He tensed up and slowly drew his rifle. A large, lumbering shadow appeared in the doorway at the end of the hall. Orleans was angled away from it, so he could only see the shadow, but the figure was so close he could smell it – it smelled sickeningly sweet like beer breath. The figure stayed there for a moment longer and then disappeared back into the bedroom.

Orleans rolled his eyes, and exhaled.

The dog began to bark wildly from deep within the woods.

Startled by the noise, two bog men charged out of the bedroom, heading towards the front door. They were giants, over six feet of burly muscle and gnarled teeth. The first bog man charged past Orleans without seeing him and ran down the hall. Scrap turned into the hall and fired a shotgun blast at it. As the massive man paused, his companion in the rear stopped in front of the kitchen long enough to see Orleans out of the corner of his eye. He pivoted with a shotgun.

Both he and Orleans pulled the trigger at the same time.

The bog man's sawn-off shotgun sprayed a wave of buckshot towards Orleans, impacting his armor, his hands, and the bottom of his chin. In sheer terror, Orleans held down his trigger, emptying an entire clip into the creature's chest. While the one bog man's body was pumped full of lead, the other bog man charged Scrap, unfazed by his single volley. It was wielding an axe, which was too long for the cramped confines of the shack. As it charged Scrap, Scrap turned to run out the door but the bog man tackled him to the ground and sunk its blunt teeth into his arm.

Scrap screamed.

Orleans continued filling the other bog man with holes. When the gun stopped firing, he sprang to his feet and shot his hands into his pockets, feeling for the next clip.

Dameon had no idea what was going on. He heard the rat-tat-tat of an assault rifle and a scream from inside the shack and went to run towards the front door, when he noticed the dog's barking was getting louder and louder. He pivoted back behind the shack to see the dog sprinting towards Dani, Chloe, and the creek with three huge shapes trailing shortly behind it.

Dameon looked down his crosshairs.

More bog men.

Dameon trained the crosshairs on an abscess just above the first bog man's bloodshot right eye. He fired.

"Help!" Scrap screamed. The bog man grabbed him, hoisted him up into the air, and slammed him down on the floor. Before Scrap could get back up, the bog man brought his axe down on his back with a thud.

"Gotcha boy!"

The bog man swung the axe down on Scrap over and over again, chopping him into a pile of bloody meat with glee.

Orleans hurried into the hall and shot the bog man in the back of the head. The creature turned around and went to bring its axe down on Orleans' head but Orleans caught the axe mid swing, dropping his rifle in the process. The creature then shoved the axe handle into Orleans' chest and went to bite his face. Orleans pushed back as hard as he could, but he wasn't strong enough to escape. He kicked the bog man in the shin as it bit his shoulder with a sickening crunch.

"Whee heeee!"

Outside, Dameon continued sniping the charging bog men, three enormous hillbillies with lever action rifles. They tried to return fire but were shockingly inaccurate. As Dameon peppered them, one managed to grab the dog and another shot the animal dead.

Horrified, Dani broke out from her cover, ran into the creek, and started to fire at the bog men from the other side of the house.

"[censored] you!" Orleans tried to head butt the enormous bog man to get it to back off but it seemed impervious to pain. As it prepared to try and bite him again, Orleans shoved his arm behind his back, grasped his combat knife, and brought it up under the creature's left arm, stabbing it in the arm pit. As it took a step back, Orleans jammed the knife into its neck over and over again, until it slumped over on the wall, and doused Orleans in blood.

Exhausted, Orleans collapsed onto the floor. He was too tired to move when he heard the front door open. Eventually, Orleans menacingly held out the knife towards the shack door with his blood soaked arm.

Dameon took a cautious step in and smiled.

"Could have. . .could have used a little back up," Orleans panted.

"I warned you. There were more outside. You lost the dog," Dameon glanced down at Scrap's mutilated body and then over to a hat rack on the far wall of the shack. A little rag doll hung off the hat rack by a thin noose. Dameon cocked his head to the side and stared at it.

Orleans reached into his pocket, soaking his shirt with fresh blood. He pulled out his flask and drained it, "[censored] man . . . [censored]."

Dameon turned around and watched as Chloe, Dani, and Ron cautiously approached.

"That was too close," Orleans muttered to himself.

Dameon stared at Orleans' bloodied arm and the bite marks on his armor. He then glanced at the slashed bog man, "you remind me a lot of myself way back when," Dameon mused.

"I'll. . .take that as a compliment," Orleans smiled and struggled to get to his feet.

Chapter 9: Turtledove Detention Camp
"It's up there then?" Dani sniffed the thick, humid air and pressed her hand against the faded, yellow sign for a moment's rest. She bent over and stretched her back and arms; she was achy and exhausted from walking day and night through the stinking bogs.

She glanced at the sign's faded lettering.

Turtledove Detention Camp ahead. Restricted area. Trespassers will be shot.

"Yeah. . .check your gear," Orleans scratched his itchy scalp and began to examine his weapon.

It was late in the night, the bogs buzzed with the chirping of insects and gurgling methane, upwelling through the pools of mud that dotted the marsh. The detention camp was completely obscured by the thick trees up ahead. It was no more than a looming shadow in front of them.

Dameon, Chloe, Ron, Dani, and Orleans had paused in a small clearing that used to be a stretch of road. The asphalt was now completely crumbled, the pavement barely recognizable as blades of tall marsh grass and thick tree roots had torn it apart over the centuries. It was close to midnight, everything more than a few feet away from them was completely obscured by the dark, foggy air.

Orleans looked over to Dameon who was fussing with his sniper rifle; half dismantling it to make sure all the parts were well lubricated and wouldn't jam in the heat of the fray. Orleans inspected his own weapon, an ancient Chinese assault rifle. He peered straight down the barrel through the notched sights. It seemed perfectly balanced, the stock still smelled faintly of gunpowder from his encounter with the bog men.

Out in front of them, in the woods, the group could hear muted pops of gunfire that sounded in a low rumble like an approaching storm. The raspy wails of ghouls echoed back to the gunfire in an inhuman response.

Dameon didn't react to the noise. With his hood up, he was nearly invisible. His black robe and coal colored boots blended in with the inky darkness. He made sure his axe was secured to his back, and then slung his assault rifle over his right shoulder. He would lead with his sniper rifle. He had meticulously cared for it since he was a teenager; its well maintained components seemed to shine in the dark night. He was comforted by the familiar feel of its smooth stock against his worn, rocky hands.

"How are we doing this? I like to move alone," Dameon lowered his rifle down to his side and piqued his ears up to the noises of battle ahead. He glanced back to a nervous Chloe.

Chloe had drawn her .32 pistol for the first time Dameon could remember. Its silver barrel vibrated in her shaking, white hands. She gave a crabbed smile to Dameon and then pulled her hood farther down over her forehead, hiding her face.

Orleans tapped Dameon on the shoulder. Dameon turned to him; he was holding four fragmentation grenades in his outstretched hand, motioning for Dameon to grab them. They looked like squat green pineapples, covered in metallic ripples; they felt icy cold on Dameon's chalky skin.

"I'd like to stick together this time. Avoid what happened back in the shack," Orleans sniffed back a sneeze.

Ron cleared his throat loudly and spit a wad of phlegm into the mud. He scratched his chin so that Dameon and Orleans would take notice of his exaggerated actions.

"What about the females?" Ron glanced over to Chloe and Dani.

Dani's face scrunched up, annoyed, tiny lines of folded skin wrinkled her forehead as she bent down to her knees and tied her boots tight.

"Chloe should stay back until we clear the camp," Dameon began to attach the grenades around his waist, hooking them to the side of his belt.

"I agree, she and Dani will hold back," Orleans tuned to the women.

"What the [censored] am I, useless?" Dani sneered. She slipped the blade of a serrated combat knife into her boot and then stood up, crossing her arms into a dejected pose, "I killed two bog men today, what the [censored] has he done?" she glared at Ron.

"You're our reinforcements," Orleans tried to give Dani a disarming smile, "take the girl to the campsite Scrap and John set up a few weeks back. Should be about a hundred feet east; look for the fire pit," Orleans pointed into the darkness off to their left, "either wait for us to get back or wait till you hear us hollering. . . then go in all Rambo as you like to do," his voice trialed off.

Dameon clenched his tight jaw. He could almost feel what was left of his gray hair stand up on his head. He had developed a deep dislike for the fiery redhead.

"This is [censored]," Dani tightened her pony tail, holstered her submachine gun, and walked off into the woods with Chloe at her heels.

Orleans watched the women leave, "we ready?"

Ron spit out another wad of saliva and phlegm and then pumped his shotgun.

Chick-chick.

(**************************************************************************)

"Engaging hostile target."

A soulless, artificial voice reverberated over the detention camp.

Dameon, Orleans, and Ron were hiding behind a green, broken down military truck that lay overturned directly outside of Turtledove's front gate. It still smelled like seeping oil after all of these years, its chassis was nothing more than a skeleton of rust.

Orleans had planned to stealthily sneak up to Turtledove's perimeter fence, cut his way through the barb wire, and marine crawl with the two other men into the camp unnoticed.

However, once the men came within sight of the camp they realized it was a war zone. The front gate was wide open; the gate door had long since fallen off its hinges and lay entangled in weeds. What was left of the barb wire fence was knocked over in four places by long felled and now half petrified trees. Ghouls had poured in from the bogs through the gaps in the perimeter fence over the past two centuries, trying to storm the camp and kill the camp's lights, while the automated guards put up a valiant, if pointless defense.

There were four guard towers in the camp, one in each corner, armed with March IV turrets that rained down a wall of lead on any ghoul that came within range. In addition to the turrets, at least two Mr. Gutsy bots glided between the rows of cramped barracks, firing neon green plasma bolts into the darkness while cackling anti Chinese propaganda.

The ghouls were hiding in the woods, making fleeting advances into the camp itself, before being beaten back by fearsome gunfire. About half of the camp's original lighting system was still up and running, driving the ghouls out in the swamps into an enraged frenzy, and giving about a quarter of the compound a faint sepia backdrop.

Orleans leaned around the truck and studied the layout of Turtledove. One side of the camp, the side from which the ghouls were trying to advance, was full of rows of small barracks. To the left of the barracks were two slightly larger structures that seemed more solid and stable.

At the far left of the camp was one large two story brick building, far away from the fleeting lights. A barely illuminated sign over the building read Administration in black military stenciling. Orleans bit his lip; he figured that would be the building to search for the Chinese cargo. As he stared at the sign, he noticed a Mr. Gutsy glide by the building. It paused and hovered in place, and then disappeared into the darkness.

Orleans leaned back and over to Ron and Dameon who were huddled tightly behind the truck. He pointed towards the administration building, "In there. Give it a go now?"

Dameon took his own look into the camp. Behind the barracks, he could hear a strange whine that sounded like a machine running without ball bearings, a high pitched squeak of metal grinding on metal that grated on his nerves.

"That turret sees us, it will cut us to pieces," Dameon fidgeted, he doubted they could sneak into the dimly illuminated camp.

"We'll be real quiet," Ron licked his dry lips and poked out from the back of the truck.

"Better be," Dameon took a last look back behind himself towards the bogs, "You realize that if we have to fry the guard bots or those turrets the ghouls are going to pour in like a flood."

Ron gave a big dumb smile, his pearly white teeth reflected what was left of the camp's lights, "Like I said, real quiet."

(**************************************************************************)

"Just because we don't have [censored] they think we can't do anything," Dani hissed. A few strands of her red hair had escaped from her pony tail and hung down around her right ear. She grabbed them and tucked them back before sitting down on a folding chair next to the old fire pit.

Chloe took a seat across from her.

The campsite was tiny, just three old chairs, a few empty crates, and a stone circle out in what seemed like the middle of the woods. The women could hear gunfire from Turtledove echo off in the distance.

"At least we won't get shot," Chloe paused and stared at her pistol. While she had never fired a pistol before, her mother had trained her to use a .32 hunting rifle back at home to hunt game. The pistol felt small and puny in comparison.

Dani watched her, "I'm not worried about getting shot. I'll hit them long before they hit me," Dani kicked over an empty can next to her chair, "you. . .you want a real gun then?"

"Huh?" Chloe tucked her .32 away.

"A real gun instead of that tiny little thing," Dani stood up and pulled a handgun out of her back holster. It was a sliver and chrome .45. She dropped it in Chloe's hands.

Chloe gripped the weapon. It was several pounds, much heavier than she had expected. She stood up and pointed it blindly out into the woods.

"Better watch out for the kickback though," Dani snorted in a half-laugh, "keep your wrist and elbow stiff or it will fly back and hit you in the face."

"It's that bad?" Chloe hesitated.

"Try it for yourself," Dani walked behind Chloe and positioned her arm for firing.

Chloe stared down the barrel.

"Here," Dani walked away, scooped up a rusted can, and propped it up on her chair. She then took Chloe by the arm and led her about ten feet away, "put a hole in it if you can. Remember, just squeeze the trigger. Much better than that little .32"

Chloe squinted her left eye, locked her wrist in place, and squeezed the trigger.

Bang!

She fired off a single shot. The can shot up into the air and disappeared behind a tree. A smile shot across Chloe's face from her success.

"Wow! I-"

Chaaaaaaaaaaa. . .

A raspy moan rang out through the forest.

Chloe nearly dropped the pistol.

Dani instantly drew her submachine gun from her side and swung around in the direction of the detention camp. She could hear footsteps up ahead in the trees, and the rustling of bushes.

Chloe knelt down next to her chair and feebly raised the .45.

Chaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Two ghouls charged out from the woods towards the women. They looked like naked old men, with lumpy skin, and dead white eyes. Before they took two more steps forward, Dani fired a stream of bullets into them, tearing them apart to the crackle of submachinegun fire.

The dead bodied collapsed onto the soft earth and twitched in the grass.

Chloe heard more footsteps off to her left.

Dani heard them too, she pivoted and waited for another ghoul, which leapt over a log and tried to pounce on Chloe, before Dani split its skull with another volley from her submachine gun.

As the ghoul's body slammed down to the ground a smile beamed across Dani's face. She ejected her empty magazine and slipped in a new one.

"That's what I'm talking about," Dani laughed, "you stick with me and – ahhhhhhhh!"

A large wad of green, irradiated muck with the consistency of mucous flew through the air and splattered on Dani's face. It instantly began to sizzle on her skin, burning it with radiation, and turning it charcoal black.

Dani let out a terrified, painful scream and dropper her gun, clawing at the goo on her face as it bubbled and boiled.

At that second, two ghoul reavers shot out of the woods like banshees. They were twice the size of normal ghouls, with nearly skeletal faces.

One of the reavers immediately grabbed Dani by the armor on her shoulder and dragged her off into the woods.

Chloe froze in fear. The other reaver towered over her as she hid behind the chair. She began to hyperventilate, her chest heaved up and down with quick breaths. She raised the .45 and pointed it at the reaver's face.

It gave her an empty, inhuman stare.

"CHLOEEEEEEEE!" Chloe heard Dani's painful scream from the darkness.

Chloe ran backwards, away from the reaver in front of her, into the woods. She followed Dani's scream, pistol in hand. Branches smacked into her face as she rushed through the dark forest.

"Chloe please!" Dani screamed from slightly up ahead.

Chloe was panting. Her robe snagged on a tree branch which made her stumble and fall to her knees. She instantly shot back up and spun around, expecting the other reaver to be on her heels. Seeing nothing, she continued running in the darkness.

"Chlo-"

Chloe finally reached Dani.

The reaver had dragged her into a small clearing. As Chloe stopped and pointed her pistol at the reaver's decaying head, it leaned over and clamped its skeletal jaws down on Dani's neck with a bone snapping crunch.

Dani's legs twitched like a smashed bug; she bled out in seconds. Chloe nearly vomited at the sight, her face turned green and her arms waivered.

The reaver felt her presence and turned around, facing her with a blood smeared face.

Chaaaaaaaa.

Chloe's face tensed as she prepared to fire. At that second, the other reaver walked up next to her.

"Ah," Chloe's heart jumped into her throat. She stood there trembling for a moment, watching the other reaver shift in place next to her out of the corner of her eye. The adrenaline in her system slowed time to a crawl.

The blood stained reaver stared at Chloe emptily, not standing up from its crouch. It then bobbed its head up and down as if it was going to throw up.

Bloo. . .blech… bleh…

The reaver dry heaved into the air and then spit out another wad of green muck that splattered on Dani's body and began to eat through her clothing and armor. The reaver then turned its gaze away from Chloe, and began to gnaw on what was left of the skin on its right arm.

Chloe took a step back. The other ghoul scurried up to Dani's body, picked up her lifeless left arm, and crunched its incisors down into her skin.

Chloe turned away and shuddered. She lingered for a few more moments, silently watching as the ghouls studied their kill, seemingly oblivious to her presence.

A thought hit Chloe.

The ghouls no longer saw her as human.

(**************************************************************************)

"Halt!" a protectron screeched.

Orleans put a slug through its metallic head with a clank.

Nothing had gone as planned. The dull camp lights were enough for a turret to spot Orleans as he and the others tried to sneak towards the administration building. The turret's first volley nearly cut Orleans in half. He, Ron, and Dameon had to sprint out behind a barracks to duck out of the turret's line of fire, but the noise roused all of Turtledove's defenses, while the distraction gave a chance for all of the surrounding ghouls to make their move.

Orleans was leaning out from the side of a tiny barracks trying to keep a Mr. Gutsy at bay with bursts from his assault rifle. Ron was on the other side, shotgun blazing at anything that moved, while Dameon stood in the center of the men, back pressed up against the wooden barrack's wall. Every few moments, he leaned out in front of one of the other men and heaved a grenade at an incoming foe.

"Communist!" the Mr. Gutsy screamed as a grenade bounced in the mud in front of it and sheared off its combat inhibitor with a blinding wave of shrapnel. The berserk machine began to shoot plasma bolts up towards a guard tower turret until the turret reduced it to a metal hulk.

"Roamer!" Dameon shouted to Ron.

Ron leaned his head out past the building corner and buried a round of buckshot into a charging ghoul. As it slumped over, he could see dozens of other ghouls charge in through a gap in the fence. The other Mr. Gutsy was trying to fill them with searing plasma, but was overwhelmed by their clawing hands.

"Problem!" Ron screamed.

The torrent of ghouls stampeded towards him.

"Go! Go! Go!" Dameon grabbed Ron by the arm, and pulled him out of his cover, towards a nearby barracks. Orleans followed them, peppering their rear with gunfire. The turret overhead was overwhelmed by all of the targets and fired wildly all across the camp.

Dameon paused and drew his sniper rifle, while Ron threw down his empty shotgun. He heard what sounded like the whine of a chain gun off in the distance followed by the wails of dozens of ghouls.

"What the [censored] was that?" Ron searched his hostler for another weapon.

"Move!" Orleans screamed, "Reaver!"

Dameon and Ron froze wide-eyed for a moment at the sight of the massive approaching ghoul. It charged at them from the open camp entrance and was completely unaffected by the strafing of a turret which punched several holes into its side.

Orleans poured lead into the advancing reaver until its advance slowed to a crawl and the turret shot it apart.

Immediately, another reaver charged out from the front gate, and flung a wad of irradiated muck at the turret. It slammed into the metal and began to dissolve the gun, which fell down in a shower of sparks. The ghoul then stood in place for a moment and hissed at the three men.

Dameon trained his sniper rifle at its ugly, bare skull. As he was about to fire, he noticed a figure coming up from slightly behind it.

"CHLOE!" Dameon screamed. He could see her standing in the camp entrance, seeming oblivious to the danger, less than a few feet behind the reaver.

Dameon tossed away the sniper rifle and clutched his assault rifle, charging out to meet the reaver.

"Chloe get the [censored] out of here!" he screamed.

Chloe stood in place, seemingly unconcerned.

The reaver lunged towards Dameon who dodged to the side. Dameon put the barrel of his assault rifle to the reaver's chest and held down the trigger.

The reaver didn't react for a moment as it was sprayed with bullets, but then it swung its claw-like hand at Dameon's head. Dameon ducked and smacked the butt of his assault rifle against the ghoul's skull. It fell to its knees and Dameon brought the rifle down on its bent body over and over again until it didn't move.

Once he was sure it was dead, Dameon ran over to Chloe and grabbed her. "What are you doing? You were almost-"

"Its okay," Chloe was overcome with excitement, "they don't attack me. They must think I'm a ghoul. They might not attack you."

Dameon pressed Chloe into his robe and hugged her for a moment. He then glanced back to Ron and Orleans. Orleans was trying to advance up to the administration building, as the coast seemed clear.

Ron was just standing in place, smiling.

"You are one lucky little girl," Ron quipped. He shook his head, amused.

A rocket slammed down into the earth next to Ron with a deafening explosion that kicked a wall of dirt up into the sky. The blast blew Ron into several bloody chunks.

Dameon fell on top of Chloe and held her down to the ground. Orleans disappeared behind the corner of the administration building.

The dust and dirt began to settle.

"Hostile detected," a commanding metallic voice boomed from behind the dust.

Chloe peeked up past Dameon's shoulder, "oh my God!"

Dameon glanced back.

A Sentry bot loomed a few feet away from him. It was over seven feet tall, standing on a tripod of three sturdy legs that ended in metallic wheels. Its face was a cold steel grate with beady, hell red eyes. Its joints creaked with a metallic whine as it shifted its arms – a rocket launcher and an enormous chain gun, tracking the two intruders in front of it.

It paused for a second as it loaded a combat subroutine.

The barrel of the chain gun on its right arm began to swirl around with a whine.

Chloe tensed up and closed her eyes.

Dameon held her tight, with his back to the Sentry bot. A wall of bullets burrowed into his spine.

Double update today - see chapter 9 above. . .and feel free to comment.

Chapter 10: Administration

A wave of bullets impacted Dameon's back. As they struck his hard skin, they made a crackling noise, like metal striking concrete. After thirty shots poured into Dameon, the Sentry bot stopped for a few seconds to let its barrels cool down.

During the brief pause, Dameon threw Chloe over to Orleans, who was still cowering next to the administration building. Dameon then turned around to face the robot which leveled its rocket launcher arm straight at his chest.

Before it could fire, Dameon charged the machine like a football lineman. Hunkered down on his knees, Dameon ran into the Sentry bot, grabbed its front tripod leg and pulled it up towards the sky as hard as he possibly could – brining the robot crashing down on its back.

As Dameon went to make his next move, the Sentry bot swung its chain gun arm at Dameon, which hit his body with the force of a semi trailer, sending him flying into the front of the brick administration building with a thud.

The Sentry bot then propped itself back up by digging its two massive arms into the ground. It readied itself to kill the intruder. The robot once again leveled its missile launcher at Dameon, who ripped the axe off his back and swung it at the Sentry bot's rocket launcher arm over and over again as hard as he could, knocking it down to the robot's side.

Clink, clink, clank, clink.

Dameon continued swinging the axe against the robot's arm. On his final swing, he damaged the wiring to the missile launcher's guidance system, crippling the robot's left arm, while his axe snapped off right below the blade from the force of the impact.

While the robot paused to survey the damage, Dameon scooped up his sniper rifle from the ground, the only object handy, and swung it like a bat against the Sentry bot's steel frame and well protected head. He continued banging the gun against the robot's chassis, but barely dented the Sentry bot's steel body while warping his own rifle's barrel.

The Sentry bot quickly backed up and held out its functional arm. The barrels on its chain gun began to swirl and whine.

"Ahhhh!"

Dameon bolted forward and grabbed the rotating barrels with both of his hands, clamping down on them with his fingers and preventing them from spinning around in a complete circle. The barrels and motor creaked from the stress. The Sentry bot began to pivot and jerk back and forth to try and throw Dameon off.

Dameon's fingers began to crack. He feared they would all snap off at once, at any second. The barrels on the robot's chain gun strained to turn and began to smoke as the gears wore raw.

"[censored]!" Dameon could feel his fingers failing, breaking apart into white pebbles.

Orleans ran up behind the Sentry bot and fired four shotgun rounds into its back, damaging it enough for it to shut down.

(**********************************************************************)

"Wow, you're actually bullet proof," Orleans marveled at Dameon's naked back.

Dameon was sitting on top of a desk in the administration building while Chloe surveyed the damage to his body.

His back was mostly chalky white; it was shattered all over like rock that had been struck with a hammer. In between the cracks in his chalky, concrete-like skin, blood seeped up from the soft flesh below.

Chloe pressed her hands to Dameon's ugly back. She stared at the blood that ran down onto her finger tips.

"I'm still somewhat human," Dameon muttered through his pain. He pulled his robe back up.

"Guess I'm damn lucky I didn't try and throw you down that survey pit," Orleans smiled and shook his head, "where's Dani by the way?"

"She's dead," Chloe glanced over to see Orleans' reaction.

He barely shrugged at the news and then began to walk down the hall, eagerly looking for any sign of the Chinese cargo, "ah ha. Here it is!"

Orleans disappeared into a room marked Evidence Lockers.

Dameon was slow to get off of the desktop. Chloe tried to help him down but he waived her off. He slipped down to the floor and painfully stretched his muscles.

Orleans popped back out of the room; "there a key in that desk?" he called over to Dameon and Chloe.

Dameon fumbled to reach for the desk drawer.

Chloe easily pulled it open before he could reach it, "nope," she strained to see down the hall, "its says the C.O.'s office is over there," she pointed to the short hall off to her right. A tattered American flag was hanging above the door.

Orleans practically charged down the hall and began digging through the commander's desk.

Dameon and Chloe walked over to the evidence lockers – three large wall safes. There were index cards placed into a slot above each safe door. From left to right they read 'detainee personal effects,' 'staff equipment,' and 'Yang- seizure.'

Chloe and Dameon heard Orleans' rushed footsteps coming back up the hall. Dameon put on a tough, grimaced face. He leaned on his rifle as Orleans entered the room, jangling a pair of golden keys.

"Are you ready?" Orleans seemed to float across the room.

"With bated breath," Dameon exhaled slowly.

Orleans inserted the smaller key into the safe, turned it, and swung the heavy steel door open.

He stuck his head inside the safe, obscuring the view of the contents.

"Well?" Chloe was curious.

Orleans looked back to them, "jackpot," he said causally. He then began to laugh, "JACK-POT!"

Dameon limped over to get a peek in the safe. Inside were several items he recognized: two Chinese assault rifles, several grenades, a Chinese pistol, an officer's sword, three stealth boys, stacks of prewar currency, a pile of old papers, a pair of sunglasses, and a half a dozen MF batteries and MF rounds. Towards the back of the safe were several strange objects he had never seen: three silver discs that looked like landmines, a long rifle with an undulating metal coil running along the barrel, a black full body suit complete with a matching helmet, and a small wrist top computer in perfect condition.

Orleans instantly grabbed the strange coil gun, "Whoa-ho," he held it up; "the [censored] is this thing?"

Dameon grabbed the pile of old papers and flipped through them. It was a catalogue of the seized assets and a topographical map. He began to read the list of seized items.

"Twenty five thousand dollars U.S. currency, two Chinese officer swords, two Chinese assault rifles, one pair of cryptochromatic spectacles, three Chinese spider recon drones, one Chinese Gauss rifle, one Chinese sneak suit, one 'pip boy,'" Dameon's voice trailed off as he flipped the pages and studied the description provided by the government for each item. He glanced back at the topographical map. It had a small red dot penned in near the edge of the bay with sloppily written text above it.

Location of spy submarine.

"Huh," Orleans slid out the magazine for the Gauss rifle, "takes MF rounds. Saw a few dozen in the safe."

Dameon continued to read the documents.

The Black Ghost Hei Gui Chinese stealth suit, or 'Sneak Suit,' was first encountered during the attack on Anchorage. It uses light refraction to render the wearer nearly invisible from a distance of twenty yards. At closer distances, the processors embedded into the Kevlar are able to project an image of the background onto the suit's skin, mimicking the natural environment by using several hundred thousand embedded pixels for superb image resolution. The suit's active camouflage is highly similar to the refractory field created by our own 'stealth boy' model, however, the sneak suit does not need as much energy to operate and can successfully cloak the wearer for hours or even days. Send to Quantico for immediate scientific anolysis - D.I.A.

Dameon flipped the page and continued reading.

Dhooooom.

Dameon was stunned by the loud boom. Chloe jumped at the noise. Orleans had fired a round from the Gauss rifle down the hall while Dameon was reading. It created a one foot square hole in the brick, blasting through the far wall to the outside.

"Look at that!" Orleans shouted. He was still pointing the rifle at the wall in awe, "it ate through that brick like it was paper."

Dameon looked at him annoyed and then turned to Chloe, "take it. Take the rest of what's in there. All I want is the suit," Dameon reached for the Chinese sneak suit.

"Huh?" Orleans put the weapon down and watched Dameon pull out the large black body suit, "hey I said you only get thirty percent."

"There's a lot more in the safe," Dameon began to roll up the suit's fabric. The movement pained him. He handed the suit to Chloe.

"That's the biggest thing in that damn safe," Orleans turned red.

"You get the guns, the ammo, the computer thing. . .have you ever even seen a working pip boy?"

"What the [censored] good is that going to do me?" Orleans walked back to the safe.

"What good is the suit going to do you?" Dameon pocketed the page with the description of the sneak suit and handed the stack of papers to Orleans. He pointed to the top page which was the faded topographic map.

"What's this?" Orleans stared at the map.

"You like puzzles? It's something about a Chinese submarine that sunk in the bay. They marked it off on the map. Know where that is?"

Orleans glanced at the page. A thin smile momentarily cracked across his lips, "could be interesting. But I think I'm done with this swamp. Time to head up north or something."

Dameon nodded and turned to Chloe, "well, we're leaving for Quantico."

"Hey, I didn't agree to this split" Orleans scrambled to raise the Gauss rifle.

Dameon grabbed the Gauss rifle's strange barrel before Orleans could fully raise it, "Take your share or take nothing. Your choice."

Orleans paused. He cocked his head and looked between Chloe and her ghoulish guardian. Even though Dameon was still in great pain he kept a stony, fearsome face.

"Fine. After I gather up this cargo, I'll head out too. I'll come up north to the highway with you two if you wait a few minutes. Make my way back to the Pitt or trade this cargo in the Commonwealth or something."

"What about your wife, Trisha?" Chloe tried to get a better grip on the sneak suit while glaring at Orleans with icy eyes.

"What about her?" Orleans shrugged and began to unload the safe.

"You're just going to leave her? She needs you," Chloe's voice was tinged with anger.

"Come on Chloe, let's go," Dameon put his hand on her shoulder and pulled at her, trying to yank her out of the room.

"I'm not going back to those [censored] at the camp. They couldn't be bothered to come up here," Orleans shouldered the Gauss rifle and plucked a few MF rounds from the safe, "they might shoot me on sight if I came back anyway. They can have her. I'll get a new wife, somewhere."

"You piece of [censored]," Chloe jerked away from Dameon.

"Hahaha, yeah well," Orleans calmly held his hand out to Dameon for a handshake, "good working with you then, partner."

Dameon stared at Orleans' outstretched hand as if it were a wriggling viper.

"Pretty low of you. . .," Dameon mumbled.

"Hey, you want her, go get her. She might slow you down a little," Orleans made a sarcastic laugh and then turned back to the safe.

"You [censored]!" Chloe ran up to Orleans and hit his face with her balled fists.

Orleans grabbed her arms, holding her back, while making sure not to hurt her. He kept his eyes nervously on Dameon while restraining Chloe.

"Chloe come on!" Dameon grabbed her and tore her away from Orleans.

Dameon then dragged Chloe outside while she kicked and tried to break free in a rage.

"You're not going to do anything!" she screamed at Dameon, "that girl will be left for dead, or something even more horrible."

Dameon let go of Chloe once they were fully outside. He closed the door to the administration building behind them, "I can't make him go back to her can I?" Dameon looked away from Chloe and up at the night sky, "and killing him wouldn't save her either."

"But," Chloe wiped her face, "we could. . ."

"We could go back, or we could finally find Emily. It's your choice," Dameon leaned against the brick outer wall, "and choose quickly. I want to get away from this camp and Orleans before he double crosses us."

Chloe was silent for a minute. She looked back towards the stinking bogs and Trisha, and then north towards the road that went to Quantico. She sniffed back more tears and wiped her reddening nose and eyes, "fine, let's get Emily."

Part II: Virginia
Chapter 11: Stafford Virginia
Dameon and Chloe didn't wait for Orleans as they began their trek to Quantico. Dameon decided to walk at night and hunker down in the forest during the day to avoid future dangers or detours. Both Chloe's condition and his own were slowly deteriorating.

Ever since his battle with the Sentry bot, Dameon's back had hardened into near solid rock. He could barely bend over; his spine seemed to be fused together, making any attempt at stretching or flexing painful. His jaw, too, was ossified or petrifying into a hard mix of bone and rock, slurring his speech and making it difficult for him to eat.

Chloe had begun to sprout with new vegetation. Leaves budded out from her scalp from just under her soft brown hair, returning again and again, no matter how many times she tore them out. The skin on her shoulders had begun to change into a reddish brown bark. She had tried to peel sections of the bark off, but it just left her with bloody patches of red skin before regenerating in mere hours.

During their trek, Dameon discovered that his new Chinese sneak suit wasn't just a body suit. It had a thin zipper than ran down the back and up the arms and legs. When Dameon fully unzipped the suit, and played with its configuration, he was able to turn the body suit into something like a large poncho that went over his head and down to just above his knees. As long as Dameon remained in a crouched position, with his knees bent and his head tiled down, the suit would make him appear entirely translucent in the day and nearly invisible at night. He liked leaving it like this, instead of the form fitting body suit, so he could remove it or put it on quickly if need be.

Dameon amused himself by playing with Chloe and the suit. He disappeared when Chloe wasn't looking and watched as she searched for him. He then snuck up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder, startling her.

While Dameon got a good laugh, Chloe decided to try out the suit as well. It draqed loosely around her from head to toe, obscuring her entire body. While she was cloaked, Dameon practiced picking out the refractory pattern of slightly bent light the suit made in the day time. Even he couldn't pick out the suit at night; it made Chloe blend in perfectly with the darkness.

As Quantico grew closer to them, the landscape began to change. The thick marsh grasses, weeds, and trees began to fade away, replaced with grassless scrub and dead tree trunks that poked up from the empty, rolling hills like stoic grave markers. While Point Lookout had been spared from the devastation of the bombs, Quantico and its environs were close to DC and a major military hub. They had been hit hard during the brief war and were still reeling from the effects of the radiation.

The farther Dameon and Chloe traveled, the more the scenery reminded Dameon of home. The bleak moonscape of rocks and dead vegetation was strangely comforting.

As he paused by an abandoned town and let Chloe drift off to sleep, Dameon's mind began to wander. He pictured himself sprawled out comfortably in his bed. His body was fresh and clean from a shower, his hair slick and dripping wet. He rubbed his smoothly shaven face and sipped on a glass of whisky while peering out the window at the jumbled skyline of MegaTon.

(****************************************************************)

"Dameon, no! Please. . .please! Don't leave me," Chloe sobbed from her bed. She leaned over the side of the dirty cot and collapsed in a heap onto the floor. She clawed at the sandy ground with her hands and crawled after Dameon.

Dameon's back was to her. He didn't react to her prostrations and instead opened the flap to the outside of the cramped tent. Sunlight cascaded in from the opening, blinding Chloe.

Dameon went to take a step outside onto the beach. Without looking back, he began to walk away to the sound of crashing waves.

"[censored] you! [censored] you, Dameon!" Chloe dragged herself along the rough sand floor. She tried to stand up to walk after him but she immediately fell over onto her side.

Chloe looked down at her body. She realized she had no legs; they ended at her knees where her pants were tied off in knots.

She screamed herself awake.

"Shhhhhh," Dameon clasped his hand over Chloe's mouth.

Chloe's eyes took a moment to come into focus. Slowly, she nodded while Dameon removed his craggy hand from her lips.

"Sorry. I had a. . .nightmare."

Dameon stood up from her and leaned against a dead tree. The two of them had paused in what was left of an ancient woods on top of a small hill, just above a tiny country town.

During the day, the town had looked deserted but inviting. Dameon had begun scavenging around the town for more food and ammo, leaving Chloe to sleep, tucked away in a ditch under a dead, thorny briar bush.

However, once the sun had begun to set, Dameon was driven off by strange noises and shadowy figures that began to dart around the dilapidated buildings. He quickly activated his sneak suit's camouflage and beat a hasty retreat back to Chloe.

"How long was I out – ow!" Chloe had begun to rub her face when she discovered that a tiny twig had grown out from the tear duct on her right eye. She poked at it with her pointer finger. The stress on the twig made her eyes sting and begin to water.

"Only a few hours," Dameon whispered to her. He was taking cover from the town below while nervously glancing down to its center, "I didn't want to wake you; you needed some sleep before we made our final push. Now that you're awake, we should go," he motioned her north, towards an empty, gravel filled meadow.

Chloe painfully ripped the twig out of her eye and went to stand up. After wiping blood from her eyelid, she noticed there was a bonfire in the center of the town. She saw a large crowd gathering around it, and she could just make out the sound of them beginning to yell and jeer.

"What's going on down there?" she whispered.

Dameon squinted, "looks like they. . .captured someone."

"Who's they?"

Dameon shrugged.

Down in the town square a group of people were dragging a large, boxy-looking man down the main street. His hands seemed to be tied behind his back, as Chloe couldn't see them. As he slowly came closer to the light of the fire, Chloe could see that the man was wearing power armor, something she hadn't seen since the Anchorage Memorial.

The man was screaming and weeping. The people around him were carrying him towards the bonfire by a noose that was loosely tied around his neck.

Chloe began to creep forward down the hill towards the town for a better look at the scene.

Dameon didn't let her get far; he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back up the hill towards the cover of the woods.

"What are you doing?" Dameon sniffed.

Chloe remained silent, watching the crowd jostle the hapless man.

A few of the figures in the mob began to pelt the man with stones.

Chloe realized the crowd was entirely ghouls. Their dead white eyes eerily reflected the flames of the roaring bonfire. They were dressed in country attire. The ghoul women were wearing old denim skirts and ruffled blouses. The men had red suspenders, overalls, and working boots. Many had rakes, bats, or torches and were waiving them menacingly in the air.

One of the ghouls stepped on top of a dead tree stump and used it as a stage. He seemed to be directing the others.

"Burn him in his devil's armor!" the ghoul commanded from above the crowd.

Chloe could see the ghoul clearly by the fire light. He was wearing a dirty white collared shirt with a bronze star pinned to his chest that reminded her of Harden Simms. His dark jeans were raggedy and full of holes. He egged on the crowd like a demagogue.

"Noooo!" the man in power armor was jerking around, trying to escape his ghoul captors.

One of ghouls tightened the noose around the man's neck and then flung the other end of the rope up and over a metal beam that was hanging over the raging fire.

"Oh my God!" the man began to moan.

"Burn him! Burn him!"

Chloe could hear the chants of the ghoul mob echo through the town.

"Looks like he's a Brotherhood knight," Dameon mused. He again motioned for Chloe to follow him away from the town.

The knight hung limply from the rope for a minute, pondering his fate. Slowly, a ghoul began to pull on the hangman's rope, hoisting the knight up into the air.

"Why are they going to kill him?" Chloe squirmed as she watched the knight struggle.

Dameon felt a pain in his jaw, "I don't know. I've seen what you've seen."

"We should stop them," Chloe looked back and forth between Dameon and the knight.

"No more side trips or stops," Dameon said annoyed, "if it takes us any longer to get to Quantico I'm going to stiffen till I can't move or you're going to root into the ground."

"We can't let them burn him alive."

"Maybe he deserved it," Dameon glanced down at the jeering mob.

"Heeelp! Oh God!" the knight screamed. His wailing made Chloe's heart race.

"No," she shook her head, "we have to do something. The Brotherhood helped us, remember?"

"No, they didn't. They just wanted the vial I was carrying. Past that they didn't give a [censored]," Dameon gritted his teeth and felt something crack in his jaw. One of his teeth had snapped off at the root. He spit it out onto the dry ground and probed it nervously with his boot tip.

"You can stay here but I'm going to try to help him," Chloe muttered.

She began to slide away, down the rocky hill towards the flickering fire light.

"No you're not!" Dameon grabbed her forcefully by her robe, tearing it and revealing her bark covered shoulder, "I'm getting us to Quantico. After we get Emily you can play desert savior to everyone we meet."

Chloe glared at Dameon's mangled face. She then ran her hand through her leafy hair, "I am not going to leave another person to die," she shuddered at the thought, "not again. I can't live with that."

"What about Emily?"

"She would tell me to do something!" Chloe shook her head, "You still don't understand that; understand why?" Her eyes turned cold and she darted away.

Dameon grimaced. He stayed back in cover behind the old tree, huffing to himself and watching as Chloe slowly made her way towards the ghoul mob.

(****************************************************************)

"Hey. . .you!" the gnarled ghoul with the sheriff's star pointed a twisted, wizened finger at Chloe from above the crowd. His face looked evil and empty, reflecting the glowing bonfire like shiny glass, "I'm the law here, you state your business stranger!"

The mob turned around to face Chloe who was nervously approaching from the shadows.

"My name is Chloe," Chloe dumbly began, she took a deep breathe as the mob of ghouls began to crowd closer to her, ogling the leaves jutting out from her hair and the hardened bark growing up to her neck.

The crowd smelled like death and decay. The odor made Chloe choke.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

The lead ghoul glanced back to the knight who swayed from struggling in the noose. The flames had begun to lick at his heels. He was sobbing in terror.

"He is a plague spreader," the ghoul hissed, "DC vermin! He came to our town to make us sick, so we would die and the Brotherhood could steal our cargo and our land. Now he shall burn for their crimes," the ghoul had a resolute smile plastered across his sagging face.

"Plague?" Chloe looked up at the knight.

"I swear. . . I didn't do anything!" the knight frantically screamed.

"Ghoul plague," the ghoul with the star coughed, "it has been spreading from DC, taking every ghoul it touches. The Brotherhood started it. They brought it down from the monument and are using vermin like him to spread it into the countryside."

"That can't be true," Chloe looked around at the mob, "look at him, he's not spreading plague. The Brotherhood isn't spreading plague. He's just a soldier."

"Lies!" the crowd roared.

"You know nothing of the plague or the death they have caused," the ghoul snarled, "I. . .I have seen the devastation they have wrought."

"How do you know he is spreading plague?" Chloe was defiant.

"Why else after all of these years would they come down into our town? Why else would the plague follow in the Brotherhood's footsteps wherever they go?"

Chloe tried to reason with ghoul, "but why would the Brotherhood want to wipe out the ghouls? They lived along side ghouls for years. They let them stay in the Underworld-"

"They forced them to dwell in that sewer to keep them out of sight. Now that they have this weapon they have begun their final purge," the old ghoul put his knotted finger to his blistered lips, "they've already purged the Underworld, now they are trying to purge us."

"What? How? Where. . .where would the Brotherhood even get plague?"

"It was the Demon!" the mob chanted in a nervous murmur.

"The Demon of the desert stole the plague from hell itself. He gave it to the Brotherhood so they could wipe us out in exchange for the bloom!" the lead ghoul's voice reached a crescendo.

Chloe's mouth went dry, "the demon?"

"Demon Rayes," a female ghoul in the crowd hissed in a dry, raspy voice.

"A vile raider from DC. He brought forth the plague," the lead ghoul glanced over past the bonfire to the tree line, "now they must all burn! The Brotherhood, the Outcasts, the Talon Company, all the humans, before this infection can spread any further," his voice quivered, "you. . .you child can go. You are not one of them, but beware. If you see them, warn them what happened here and to never come back."

Chloe felt ill, she momentarily glanced up to where Dameon was hiding and thought about the vial.

"Now, remove her from here," the ghoul with the sheriff's badge gave Chloe a sneer and waived her off, "and lower the human to his fate."

A burly ghoul in a tattered business suit grabbed Chloe by her shoulders and began to drag her away from the fire. She struggled to break free and writhed in his cold grip.

"Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!" the crowd began to cheer once more.

A haggard looking ghoul grabbed the loose end of the hangman's rope and gave it more slack, lowering the knight further into the flames, before tying it to the gutter of a nearby building.

The knight's armor began to turn black from the smoke and soot. He was coughing and gagging from the noose, his face was gaunt. He chocked back sobs and tried to hold his legs up and away from the raging flames.

"Let me go!" Chloe bit the arm of the ghoul who was restraining her. It broke apart like old, dried out leather, revealing a patch of grey bone.

The ghoul painfully clutched his torn flesh and Chloe broke free, darting up to where the rope was anchored. She snatched a small folding knife from her robe and began slashing the taught rope.

The knight saw what was happening and tried to swing back and forth so he would fall free of the fire if cut loose.

The crowd descended on Chloe before she could finish the job. She was lost in a jumble of withered arms and bony legs, buried under the mass of ghouls; kicking, screaming, and flailing her body.

She clawed at one of the ghouls, taking out his eye with her fingernails. He moaned in pain.

"Burn the [censored] too! Doubter! Traitor!" a voice from the crowd shouted, "Heretic!"

"Burn her! Burn her!" the mob chanted.

A ghoul pried Chloe from the crowd and pinned her arms behind her back. As she screamed at the top of her lungs, he held her up into the air and walked her over to the fire.

Several of the ghouls spat on Chloe and menaced her with torches. She cursed them hysterically and struggled to get free as the bonfire grew closer and closer.

The ghoul restraining her reached the fire's edge and bent Chloe over, down towards the flames. She fought against him as hard as she could until she was sapped of her strength. The ghoul then looked towards the leader for the all clear to throw Chloe into the inferno.

The cheers of the crowd began to die down.

The lead ghoul looked around, confused by the sudden silence. Slightly back from the mob and bonfire he saw a lone man standing completely still in the dark night. The man was tall and bulky. His strange cloak obscured most of his face except for his grayish, ghoulish looking chin. He stood locked in place like a stone.

"Who are you!" the ghoul shouted at the strange figure. He snatched a silver pistol from his side and pointed it at the strange man, "are you one of us? Show your face!"

Dameon stared at the ghoul and the mob in silence. Crickets chirped softly in the woods behind him. A cool wind blew down from the hills and rustled the dead weeds around his feet.

"I said who are you? Are you a human? Ghoul?" the ghoul repeated loudly.

Dameon stood motionless, eyes hidden under his hood.

"Why are you here? Who-"

"I am death; I've come to take you."

Before the ghoul could react, Dameon vanished into thin air.

The ghoul mob was stunned. Shrill gasps of horror reverberated through the masses.

The strong ghoul holding Chloe let her slip from his grasp and she pulled away.

Chloe made her way through the confused crowd to the tattered hangman's rope.

The lead ghoul looked around wildly for Dameon, pistol shaking in his withered hand, "Donald! Merrion! Get your rifles!"

A few armed ghouls anxiously scanned the darkness for any sign of the apparition.

Slowly, all grew quiet again as the ghouls searched the perimeter.

Chloe slashed through the hangman's rope while the ghouls were distracted.

"Hey!" the lead ghoul watched as the knight crashed to the ground next to the fire.

The knight's armor was red hot. He kicked off his glowing leggings and boots and rolled around in the dirt to stop the smoking. His feet were pink and blistered from the heat. He was crying out from the pain.

"Seize him!" the lead ghoul shouted while pointing his weapon at the prone knight. He jumped off the tree stump and began to run, pistol in hand, over towards the knight and Chloe.

Before the ghoul could reach them, Dameon suddenly appeared from out of nowhere behind the ghoul with a knife in hand. He grabbed the ghoul by his scalp, bent his head back, and slit his throat in one motion. The ghoul collapsed onto the ground, blood pouring down his shirt.

As the mob began to scream in terror, Dameon once again vanished.

"It. . .it. . .it must be the demon!" a ghoul frantically cried.

"THE DEMON!" the mob repeated in excited murmurs.

They began scattering, running into the empty buildings, up into the forest, anywhere away from the bonfire.

Dameon, Chloe, and the knight hunkered down in a deep section of dead woods north of the town for the rest of the night. They listened to the frightened murmurs of the ghouls below until the break of dawn.

Chapter 12: Josephus
"Are you okay now?" Chloe smiled to the exhausted knight through the early morning light.

The knight was a young looking man, no older than thirty. His eyes were black as coals and looked worn and tired. His face was caked with dust and grime and was full of fresh scratches and scraqes from being manhandled by the ghoul mob. His wiry hair was matted with streaks of blood dyed black by the smoke of the bonfire.

Although most of his injuries were minor, he still appeared to be in a state of shock, slowly rocking back and forth in a sitting position with a vacant thousand yard stare.

"What's your name?" Dameon interjected.

"Huh," the knight looked up at him and blinked, "Joseph. . .err Josephus Knoss," the man let out a deep, hacking cough, his lungs were still caked with soot and ash, "13th Recon."

"Josephus, I'm Chloe, he's Dameon," Chloe pointed to Dameon who stood expressionless.

Dameon leaned back against a dead tree and poured the dregs of a bottle of foul water into his mouth.

"Dem….Dameon Rayes?" Josephus began to cough again. He rubbed his hands on his blistered feet and tried to catch his breath.

Dameon rolled his eyes and tried to spit on the ground but nothing came out, "you shouldn't have told him, Chloe."

Chloe stood up from her squat, "You always wanted notoriety. Now that everyone fears you, you should be happy with yourself."

"Just what do you know about me?" Dameon loomed over the edgy knight.

"Nothing. Just the name," Josephus struggled to stand; his legs were wobbly and he was sweating bullets, "those things were hollering about Demon Rayes. I remembered people at the citadel talking-"

"Those things?" Dameon cocked his head, annoyed.

"Uhh," the knight almost blushed, looking at his inhuman company, "the ghouls I mean. I'm sorry."

"How did they capture you?" Chloe leaned forward.

"My squad was sent down here by Citadel Command to do reconnaissance on the Talon Company base at Quantico. They call it 'Eagle Claw.' We were attacked all along the way by the mercs; someone tipped them off. By the time we made it to the base, there were too few of us to do anything. We retreated south to get away from them but those ghouls picked us off one by one," Josephus trailed off and rubbed his dirty face.

"You've been to Quantico?" Chloe was ecstatic.

"Huh," Josephus paused and looked around nervously, "yeah. Why?"

"That's where we're headed. We heard her sister was taken there by the Talon Company."

Josephus began to nod, "the Talon Company has been snatching people from around Maryland and Virginia for a while now. They take them back to Eagle Claw."

Dameon tried to furrow his hard brow, "what would the Talon Company want with them? Slaves?"

"I don't know. We were sent down to find out why. They have been raiding nearby towns, getting closer and closer to DC ever since the bloom."

"The bloom?" Dameon and Chloe both stared at Josephus blankly.

"The DC bloom," Josephus continued, "what ghouls call the plague. Ever since the battle at the Anchorage Memorial the ghouls all over DC have been dying. At the same time, the desert began to bloom. Flowers, bushes, all kinds of plants I've never seen before. It's a miracle," Josephus smiled at the thought for a moment but then the elation left his face.

"A [censored] miracle," Dameon snidely repeated his words and took a step away. He peered past the trees, down towards the open meadow that led to Quantico.

Chloe looked crossly over to Dameon. He had his back turned to her.

"What happened at the memorial?" Chloe whispered to Josephus.

"I don't know. General Lyons took a few squads there on some classified mission. No one made it out. I just heard rumors that the ghouls in DC went berserk and attacked the Brotherhood. Then the Enclave swooped in and killed everyone who was left. Figure the Enclave must have released something there that's been killing the ghouls and making everything grow."

Chloe's expression changed to a glare. She stared at Dameon with burning eyes. He glanced back nonchalantly and then slowly began to walk back over to them.

"What about you two?" Josephus looked inquisitively at Dameon and Chloe, "what happened to you to make you, you know?"

Chloe stormed off to get away from Dameon. He watched her walk down the hill towards the empty meadow, alone.

"We played with green goo," Dameon muttered.

"What?" Josephus stared blankly at him. He began stuff some of the dead, dry grass around him into his boots to pad his sore feet.

"Just wait here," Dameon walked off to confront Chloe.

(****************************************************************)

"How could you?" Chloe was furious. She was sitting on the far side of the hill, staring down at the windswept meadow, watching the gravel and dust being kicked up by the restless wind.

"How could I what?" Dameon went to sit down next to her, but she scooted away.

Chloe wiped her face, "I didn't know what the ghouls were talking about at first. The plague. It was the vial. You caused the plague! You. . .you must have killed thousands upon thousands of people."

"Ghouls."

"PEOPLE, Dameon!" Chloe nearly screamed.

"I didn't know what would happen," Dameon turned away from her and looked back to Josephus who was ignoring their conversation while licking his wounds, "I wouldn't have done it had I'd known we would wind up like this. But hell, I thought we were going to die if I didn't do anything. Actually, I thought we were going to die anyway."

Chloe made a cruel smile, "so then you killed thousands of people for no reason?"

"I said I didn't know what would happen. I thought maybe it would . . .help," Dameon sniffed the dry air.

"I don't believe you. You're lying," Chloe's hands shook in anger. The leaves on her head seemed to rustle, "you knew exactly what it would do. You always hated ghouls."

"We were being irradiated to death. We would both be dead now if-"

"We should be dead!" Chloe shot up to her feet.

"Well, we aren't. And while we aren't, we should get moving," Dameon clutched his assault rifle.

Chloe brushed her hair out of her red eyes, "Why. . .why is this so important to you?"

"Why is what important to me?"

"Finding Emily."

Dameon was taken aback; he stared blankly at Chloe trying to read her contorted expression.

"I. . .I honestly thought you had changed since we met. That you weren't the raider you were before. That you had become empathetic and had grown a conscience. That you gave a [censored] about people. But you haven't changed. You're the same person. Your only joy comes from terrifying or killing people. I could tell how much you enjoyed killing that ghoul. When you cut his throat I bet you had a big smile on your face. . . that's what you love. You were willing to kill every ghoul in DC to save your own life. You have no. . .you. . .you are the demon you wanted to be."

Dameon couldn't think of anything to say. He went to brush a leaf back from Chloe's forehead but she stopped him.

"I think you only want to find Emily for some sense of accomplishment or closure. Not because you actually care about her. I don't think you could care about anyone."

"I want to find her for you," Dameon put his hands on Chloe's bark covered shoulders, "I care about you."

"I would have told you not to save me if I knew anyone would have to die, let alone thousands of innocent people. Think of all those faces in the Underworld. They'll haunt me forever. I would have gladly died back in the memorial if you had told me what that vial would do to them. . .or us," her voice cracked and she shook her head, "I would have given up on Emily if I had known that."

Dameon squinted as much as he could with his stiff facial muscles, "I'm sorry, but what's done is done. I just acted on instinct. Since we aren't dead we should do something useful. I figure that finding Emily will. . .help redeem what I've done"

"You have to ask to be redeemed. . .and we are dead, Dameon," Chloe ran her fingers along her bark, "It just hasn't hit us yet. We have been cursed for our sin, you and I both," she almost laughed at her choice of words.

Chloe lingered for another moment, avoiding eye contact with Dameon. She then began to walk back towards Josephus.

Dameon racked his brain for something to say to her, "I do care about you," he called out to Chloe, "You. . . you're my conscience. I have changed, because I know I wouldn't have any good in me without you. . .I need you," he croaked.

"Well, I don't want to be your conscience. That's something you need to find inside yourself. If we do find Emily, I don't want you to follow us. Emily and I can make it home by ourselves . . .even if we don't, it would be better that way. I don't want to see you again, Dameon."

Dameon watched her walk away slowly, "You know I'm not evil like you make me out to be, I just have to make tough choices. You haven't had to make any tough choices in your life. Other people have made them for you. When you have to make them for yourself. . .then you become the bad guy."

Chloe paused mid-step, "ask yourself if the choices you've made have made your life better."

(****************************************************************)

Josephus rose to his feet and checked his gear. Chloe had walked off in her own world, while Dameon was trying to stretch out his stiff body.

"You," Dameon walked over to Josephus, "you need to lead us to Quantico."

Josephus shook his head, "No. I can't go back there. They'll cut me to pieces. I need to get back to DC and make my report as soon as possible, before the Talon Company attacks again."

"Quantico is on the way to DC. You can guide us there and then make your way back."

Josephus continued to shake his head, not listening to what Dameon was telling him, "we were harried the whole way. I can't get near there again. They'll see me and they'll-"

"Look at what you're wearing," Dameon pointed to Josephus's shiny armor, "take that off so you look like a civilian. Then you can sneak around without sticking out like a sore thumb. If you get us to Quantico I can tell you the names of a few friends up in Andale who can get you back to DC. Andale shouldn't be more than a few days walk from there."

"You don't understand," Josephus was trembling, "I can't go back. I need-" He chocked on his spit.

"You're supposed to be a soldier," Dameon's face was riddled with contempt.

Josephus stood mute. He blinked emptily.

"Don't you think you owe us something? You'd still be roasting on that fire if Chloe hadn't almost gotten herself killed for you," Dameon spat.

Josephus looked away and slowly nodded, "I will take you to Eagle Claw. . . but then I'm gone," he scratched a large red ring that went around the base of his neck from where the noose had dug deeply into his skin. He massaged it with trembling hands, scared to death of the thought of having to go back.

"Then it's a deal," Dameon nodded. He expected Chloe to chime in and say something but she stayed far away from the two of them, staring up at the sky, feeling incredibly alone.

your narrative is mature and well crafted. I especially like how you have woven your story into the setting of Point Lookout seemlessly. an enjoyable epic with developed characters.

A/N: Thanks Goris. I hope you keep reading.

Chapter 13: Eagle Claw
Dameon and Chloe pushed in closer to one another and stared down at the impressive fortress laid out on the sloping valley below.

Quantico had looked much different before the war. Several nuclear warheads had been dropped around the perimeter of the training base, irradiating it for over one hundred years. It had been little more than a collection of piles of rubble and valuable military scrap before the Talon Company had arrived and begun to put the pieces back together.

The Talon Company had rebuilt several of the main buildings, refurbished the housing barracks to make them livable, and repaired the base's fences and automated defenses, turning the mountain of twisted metal into a bastion of defense.

Now named Eagle Claw, the base was a sprawling compound tucked inside of a gentle valley, ringed by a double fence capped with glimmering razor wire. Inside of the base were dozens of barracks, a large mess hall with a billowing smoke stack, three live firing ranges that crackled from dusk target practice, a fortified armory complete with Sentry bots and Robo-brains, two heavy artillery emplacements, and three large, corrugated warehouses that looked like aircraft hangers.

Talon Company guards patrolled the perimeter fence with snarling dogs, decked out head-to-toe in heavy combat armor and Kevlar flak jackets. They were armed with RPGs, laser rifles, and chain guns that sparkled in the light of the full moon. Seven guard towers towered over the base, manned by dozens of crack snipers. The towers cast out bright searchlights in long, deliberate sweeps that jogged around the perimeter fence, piercing through the falling darkness.

Dameon counted at least twenty mercenaries on the side of the base that he and Chloe were facing. Any clumsy approach would lead to instant death from a hail of bullets.

Josephus had taken Dameon and Chloe this far before bidding them an awkward farewell and disappearing into the wasteland, leaving them to an uncertain fate. As a parting gift of sorts, he had told Dameon that during his previous reconnaissance foray, he had seen a group of wastelanders being taken into one of the large hangers on the south side of the base.

Dameon tried to pick out that particular hanger from the others in the moonlight. He noticed the hanger on the southeast side of the base had a large blue number painted across its roof.

4

"How do we to get in?" Chloe whispered to Dameon.

"I don't recommend the front door," Dameon glared at the front gate.

On either side of the front gate were machinegun nests, built up with piled sand bags. Dameon could see helmets bob up and down in the gun emplacements. A wrecked jeep with a grenade launcher mounted on its roof was parked just inside of the fence. The operator swiveled the launcher around, taunting any would-be intruders.

"They have a ridiculous amount of guards out patrolling. Maybe they got word of another recon party," Dameon nervously scratched his hard face.

Chloe was mesmerized by the roving spotlights, "you could use the suit to get in."

"That was my plan," Dameon fiddled with the fabric of the sneak suit.

A group of three mercenaries walked over to the front gate, dragging a piece of mobile artillery behind them. The guard dogs began to whine and bark at their approach. The gate made a loud buzz and began to creak open.

"What about me?" Chloe scratched her neck. The bark had crept up to her chin and was constantly itchy.

"I would say wait here while I sneak in with the suit," Dameon paused, "but if I do find Emily it won't matter anyway. I won't be able to sneak both of us out with one suit," he watched the lights flicker on and off in the barracks, "you may as well come with me. We'll have to think of an exit plan on the fly."

Chloe bit her lip, "I'm terrible at sneaking."

"You use the suit," he handed it to her; "in this light they'll never be able to see you."

"What about you?" Chloe said surprised.

"I'm pretty experienced at sneaking into places. Just follow right behind me and don't blow my cover. If they see me just stay hidden. If they catch me or kill me get the hell out of there."

Chloe began to put the suit on.

Dameon drew his knife and clipped it to the outside of his cloak. He dropped his rifle; it would be of little use. He kept a small black pistol as his weapon of last resort.

Dameon made sure his clothing and gear were tightly strapped to his body so nothing would rattle around when he crept forward. He then mixed what was left of the grease he used to keep his rifle lubricated together with some of the gravel and sand on the ground. He smeared the mixture across his white face to drown out any reflection.

"Are you ready?" Chloe's voice was tinged with anticipation. She flicked on the sneak suit's active cammo and disappeared into the night.

Dameon took a last peek at the hanger from his position atop a low hill.

My last hurrah. . .

Dameon tried to smile. He lay down on his stomach and began to marine crawl forward.

Crawling caused Dameon a great amount of pain because his spine refused to bend or give with his movements. Each push forward was agony as his bones seemed to grind against one another. He didn't look back for Chloe, assuming that she would be right on his heels.

As the perimeter fence loomed closer and closer ahead of him, Dameon paused to survey the pattern of the searchlights. They seemed to swing across this particular stretch of fence at two minute intervals. In between sweeps, a guard with a mangy looking Doberman pincher would walk along the inside of the fence.

The only cutting tool Dameon had was his knife. He popped it off his belt and put the blade between his teeth. He strained to close his stiff jaw over it, and continued to pull himself closer and closer to the fence.

The spotlight swung by, thirty meters in front of him.

Dameon could hear the guard with the dog approaching. The dog was pawing at the ground and eagerly sniffing the air, tracking a strange scent.

Dameon waited for them to pass and then continued his approach at a slower pace.

Twenty meter, ten meters.

Dameon's cloak was being ripped apart by the rocky soil. The rough terrain was also sanding down the bottom of his chin as he fought as hard as he could to keep down as low as possible.

The spotlight swung by again.

Dameon froze and watched it pass. He waited for the sound of the guard and the dog and then he inched up even closer to the fence.

Five meters, four meters.

Dameon put his hand to the fence. It was taught barb wire. The razor sharp barbs couldn't poke through his tough skin but they instantly snagged a loose thread on his cloak. He put the blade of his knife to a section of wire two feet off of the ground and pulled down.

The wire split and Dameon made a narrow slit through it.

The spotlight arced back for another sweep.

Dameon retreated a few feet back, bumping up against a large object. His heart raced and sweat ran down his chalky forehead. He was certain he had been caught and waited for the inevitable alarm.

The spotlight passed by in its usual pattern.

"Sorry," Chloe creaked from behind him.

Dameon wanted to scream for her to shut up but stayed silent. He watched a guard pass by and then slipped through the first fence.

The barb wire grabbed his cloak and tore it to shreds. Dameon prayed no one in the base would notice the wire vibrating. With the barbs on his heels, Dameon put his knife to the interior fence and tore a slit down into it.

The spotlight was approaching again. There was no time to back up. Dameon crawled forward and through the second fence just as the spotlight swept over where he had just been.

Dameon didn't have time to let out his breath. A guard and a dog began to make their way forward towards him. The fence shook as Chloe tried to ease her way through. Her sneak suit caught on the barb wire.

The guard dog cocked his ears and sniffed expectantly.

Dameon slid around a supply crate as the guard came closer and closer to the gap in the fence.

Chloe froze, entangled in the wire, waiting for the guard to pass.

The guard paused in his tracks. His dog was sniffing the ground wildly, trying to hone in on a scent. Just as the guard noticed the torn section of fence, Dameon came up behind him and grabbed him by the neck. He broke it in one motion.

The dog let out a bark as Dameon dropped the man. Dameon then grabbed the dog. The dog snapped its jaws down on his hands, but its teeth couldn't pierce his concrete flesh. He held the beast's mouth shut with one hand and stabbed it in the throat with the other.

As Chloe finally freed herself and slipped in, Dameon grabbed the guard's arms and dragged him and the dead dog behind the crate. He then crept farther into the base, ducking behind a stack of ammo boxes and old sandbags, quickly making his way east, towards the hanger.

Chloe was an apparition somewhere behind him, Dameon couldn't tell where. He kept his eyes forward, locked on the corner of the roof of the hanger he was using as a waypoint. He then slid down into an unmanned artillery emplacement. He marveled at the size of the barrel of the ancient gun.

"Where's Mooney?" a voice called out from the perimeter fence.

Dameon shook his head to himself and began to shuffle forward as quickly as possible on his knees. He paused at the edge of a large barracks, poked his head around the corner, and seeing that no one was coming, he raced across the open alley and slid under a wrecked jeep.

There were voices off in the distance. Their pitch became more excited and there were frantic footsteps.

Dameon slid out from under the jeep and continued towards the hanger. Shapes ran between him and the perimeter fence. He pressed himself up against a barracks wall and watched as the shapes ran towards where he had come from. He could smell their body odor waft past him as they darted by.

Dameon was less than twenty feet from the side of the hanger. He made his way around the barracks, through a narrow alley way, and over to its corrugated metal.

"WE'VE BEEN BREACHED! SOUND THE ALARM!"

Lights began to flicker on, all across the base. An old air raid siren near the front gate gave off a long, high pitched wail.

Dameon took off at full speed towards the front of the hanger. He could hear the mercenaries running around and shouting to one another. As their voices grew louder, Dameon tried to push open the massive hanger doors. They were fastened together by a chain and padlock.

Dameon snapped the chain with his bare hands and pushed the doors open. Bright, white light cascaded out from the inside of the hanger, lighting up the dark base around him.

"THERE!"

Dameon stepped inside of the hanger and pushed the doors closed behind him. A long iron bar lay on the hanger floor in front of the door. Dameon picked it up and put it into slots on each side of the door, barricading it shut from the inside. He then turned around and waited for his eyes to fully adjust to the brightness.

The hanger was completely empty. The walls were bare metal painted eggshell white. The ceiling was a skeleton of I beams and naked light bulbs. The floor was a patchwork of riveted steel sheets.

Dameon was stunned. There was literally nothing inside of the hanger at all; it was two thousand square feet of completely wasted space.

He cursed Josephus as the mercenaries began to bang on the barricaded hanger doors.

"What do we do?" Chloe appeared from the nothingness next to Dameon

"Goddamnit Chloe! Why didn't you escape!" Dameon's mind raced.

The banging on the doors grew louder. The mercenaries were shouting and hitting the metal doors with their rifle butts.

Dameon frantically looked around the empty hanger for an escape route. The four bare walls and steel floor betrayed no exit. There were no gaps in the ceiling to slip through, no exit door in the rear, nothing to hide under or inside of.

Dameon snatched the pistol from his side, "I'm. . .I'm going to open the door. When they rush in, you escape while I distract them."

"They'll kill you!"

Dameon walked over to the door and began to lift up the iron bar, "I don't care. Get out of here."

"WAIT!" Chloe screamed.

Dameon almost ignored Chloe, but at the last second, he decided to turn around.

Chloe was pointing to a manhole-sized hatch in the middle of the hanger floor. It was flush with the ground; Dameon hadn't noticed it during his first look around.

Dameon ran over to the hatch. As the banging on the doors became louder and louder, he nervously pulled it open.

Underneath the hatch was a small steel door with a spoked, circular handle. The number '4' was emblazoned on the door. Dameon turned the spokes on the handle around furiously. He heard the robotic voice of a Sentry bot boom outside and expected a wave of bullets to burst through the hanger walls and rip them to shreds at any moment.

Finally, Dameon fully unscrewed the door and was able to pull it open. Below it was a narrow, metal ladder that led down into pitch black darkness.

"Go down it, now," Dameon pushed Chloe down the hole.

Chloe struggled to find the ladder rungs with her feet.

Dameon nearly stepped on top of her as he slid down the hole. He slammed the hatch closed behind himself and began to screw it shut. He pulled the spokes on its handle as hard as he could; bending them to the left side and warping the metal, in the hope it would jam the door shut.

It was too dark to see inside of the hole. Chloe made her way down to the bottom of the ladder, about fifteen feet below the entrance hatch. She came down to solid ground and paused in the darkness.

"What now?" she whispered.

Dameon waited and listened for any movement above. With the hatch and door closed he couldn't hear anything. He caught his breath in the silence.

After a few moments, Dameon fumbled around in his pocket. He grabbed an old book of matches and flicked one against the pack's edge.

The old match dimly illuminated the surroundings. The hole was an empty concrete tube. There was nothing around either of them but the ladder.

Dameon and Chloe looked down at their feet. On the floor was another, larger door.

Blue stenciling on the door read "Vault 4."

Sorry, had computer problems and it wasn't possible to post, but this is still my all time favorite. I don't understand why more people don't post on this epic tale, keep them coming, their brilliant.

A/N: Thanks Yttrium. Cool that you're still checking this out.

Chapter 14: Vault 4
"Here we go," Dameon pried open another door as he and Chloe clung together on the lowest ladder rung. He tightened his grip on the cold steel and gave the door below a final kick, knocking it open with a loud thud.

"Oh shi-"

There was nothing below the door but a long fall. Dameon's grip failed as Chloe lost her balance from vertigo and wrapped her arms around his thick waist. They both tumbled down from the ladder through the open hatch on the ceiling, crashing into a heap onto the floor two stories below.

Dameon landed first, facedown on shiny white and green tile. His body shattered the floor below him like it had been hit by a meteor. It felt like his bones had broken into splinters from the force of the impact.

Chloe landed on top of Dameon; his hard body broke most of her fall.

Dameon painfully turned his head to the side and was blinded by bright lights that were all around him. His ears were ringing loudly, drowning out all the ambient noise.

Chloe slowly rolled off of Dameon's back as he painfully tried to straighten out his twisted body and climb to his feet. As the shock of the fall wore off, Dameon realized the ringing in his ears was actually soft, fleeting music. He rubbed his eyes as Chloe sat up on the floor, trying to shake off the fall.

They had crash landed in the middle of a vast hall. Each side of the hallway was lined with shops that towered two stories high on two separate tiers. The shops had bright neon signs and vibrant displays that flashed and buzzed with art-deco stylings. The stores were crammed full of prewar clothing, shoes, candy, fragrances, and toys. The air in the hall was saturated with the smell of popcorn and sweet perfume.

The hall was so clean it sparkled. It had been completely untouched by the omnipresent dust and sand from the outside. The floor's white and green tiles stretched up to the ceiling in a large mosaic, supported by ornate Corinthian columns, which were each dotted with flowers and cherubs that had been carved deeply into the stone. Large palm trees and leafy shrubs dotted both sides of the hallway in gigantic bronze urns.

Dameon shook his head to try and get rid of the cobwebs. He did a double take, scanning the hallway from side to side. He saw a fully functional, animatronic 'Giddyup Buttercup' pony cavort around a store front window while a pair of model Corvega race cars flew across a curvy electric track at lighting speed. A tethered toy jet fighter screeched by in a never ending circle pattern on the ceiling of a nearby store.

A crowd had begun to gather around Chloe and Dameon. They were men and women dressed in blue and yellow prewar vault suits - attire that Dameon had only ever seen draqed around ancient skeletons - but their clothing and shoes looked new, pressed and buffed to a shine.

Many of the women in the crowd were pushing baby strollers; their babies seemed to sit up in their carriages to ogle the mutated strangers. All of the faces of the crowd were twisted into various shades of shock and nervous bewilderment. None of the men or women moved for a moment, making Dameon wonder if he was in the middle of a dream, or if he had been sent back to some moment frozen in time.

A little girl in a tight vault skirt let out a shrill scream, breaking the stalemate, as she cowered at the sight of the two, alien invaders.

As Chloe rubbed her sore arm and looked to Dameon for some sign of what was going through his mind, a group of security officers shot out from two well hidden doors along the far side of the hall.

The security force began to run in military formation towards Chloe and Dameon. Their black combat boots clicked on the hard floor with each step. They were wearing blue and grey uniforms with the number 4 emblazoned on their backs and helmets. The officers carried pistols, night sticks, and cattle prods that crackled with electricity. Their helmets had plastic visors that ran down the front of their faces and their chests were covered in thick body armor that looked like riot control gear.

Quickly, the security team formed a firing position between Dameon, Chloe, and the panicked crowd.

The surrounding men, women, and children retreated into the nearby stores.

"Freeze! Hands up! Down on the floor! Right now!" one of the security officers screamed. He knelt down and aimed a laser pistol at Dameon.

A red laser dot came to a rest on the middle of Dameon's forehead.

While Dameon would normally have instinctively dove for cover, he was in too much of a trance from the alien scenery to react. He stood dumfounded while the security team inched forward.

"Down on the ground, now!" The officer shrilly repeated.

Babies began to wail from their strollers.

Suddenly a booming voice echoed over the vault PA system.

"Everyone, please remain calm. These guests have been expected. They are none of your concern."

The crowd of men and women immediately took the deep voice at its word. They casually began to disperse back into the hall, now seemingly unconcerned with the strange, mutated wanderers. The hall filled up with the murmur of dozens of conversations as the men and women went back to shopping, eating, and fussing with their newborns.

"Will the security team please escort the visitors to my office," the PA system drowned out the hum of the crowd before clicking off.

The security officers only half relaxed. They lowered their weapons and waived Chloe and Dameon forward and down the hall. The officers never got too close to the strangers, instead keeping a safe distance from them, while glancing up at the ceiling to make sure that no other alien wanderers crashed down from above.

Chloe tapped Dameon on his rocky shoulder, asking him with her eyes what they should do next. Dameon was speechless. His glance shot up and down the hall. Parents and children were strolling in and out of stores carrying new looking toys and clothes while shoving hotdogs into their faces like the two of them had never intruded on their world.

It looked like a page out of a prewar shopping magazine or the capitalist propaganda of a SuperDuper Mart advertisemant.

"This way. The governor wants to speak with you," a security officer pointed Dameon and Chloe towards a double set of golden elevators at the end of the hall. His armor had a name tag patch over his heart. It read 'Dyson' in bold, black letters.

Dameon gave a slow nod to the guard, trying to come out of his trance. He and Chloe slowly began to walk down the hall towards the elevator.

As Dameon took a last look at his surroundings, he noticed a different set of security guards had positioned themselves on the second level of the hall. They had rifles that Dameon recognized as FN FALs with long scoped barrels. These guards were wearing sky blue armor that looked like power armor but was thinner and more segmented like a medieval knight's plate armor. Their faces looked plastic and emotionless as they stared down at the strangers from the upper tier.

Dyson passed by Dameon and pressed the elevator button. The golden doors opened with a loud chime.

Dameon and Chloe looked to one another and then hesitantly stepped inside the elevator with Dyson in toe. Three more security guards piled into the elevator and the doors slid shut behind them to soft jazz music.

The elevator buttons listed floors 1-15. Dyson pressed number 3 and the button lit up crimson red.

The elevator groaned to life and shot upwards.

Chapter 15: Lukasz Drybala
"Right up here," Dyson pulled open a large door.

Behind the door was another set of thick double oak doors. Two guards in strange, sky blue armor stood between the two sets of doors. They put their hands up in front of them, motioning for Dameon and Chloe to stop. The guards looked nearly identical to one another, as if they were twins.

As Dameon and Chloe paused in the threshold, one of the guards patted them down for weapons. His hands shot up and down Dameon's body at an inhumanly fast pace until they were just a blur. The guard's fingers deftly plucked a pistol and a knife from Dameon's robe before he realized what had happened.

As Dameon swung around in confusion, the guard tucked Dameon's pistol into his own waistband and then patted down Chloe at the same blinding speed. He snatched a .45 out of her sneak suit and tossed it to the other guard.

Satisfied they were unarmed, the other guard then pulled open the last set of doors.

On the other side of the doors was a sprawling office, the walls of which were lined with tall bookcases crammed full of hundreds of meticulously arranged tomes. In the center of the office was an oval, mahogany desk. A middle aged man was seated behind the desk, fussing with a pile of papers. A computer monitor seemed to hang just over the desk's back edge and a phone sat next to it with dozens of blinking 'on hold' lights. Behind the desk were four large windows that looked out on an expanse of nothingness, illuminated by hundreds of tiny twinkling lights. On either side of the man were large American flags in gilded stands.

The room had a thick, plush, green carpet that Dameon and Chloe seemed to sink into as they entered. A strange, yet familiar seal was embossed at its center.

Dyson shot in front of Dameon and Chloe and walked up to the man behind the desk. Before he could say a word, the man looked up and squinted at him with a slightly irritated expression.

"Thank you, chief Dyson," the man shooed Dyson away with his tone.

As Dyson exited the room, he shot a brief glare to Dameon and Chloe.

Dameon and Chloe stood in place, unsure of what to do. There were two empty chairs in front of the desk. While the man behind the desk busied himself with the stack of papers, they took a seat.

"Nixus, Crixus," the man casually glanced up at the two identical guards, "thank you as well."

The guards walked out of the room simultaneously. They closed the double doors behind themselves with a loud click.

Dameon and Chloe waited for the man to begin conversation. Instead, he was absorbed by the papers in front of him, scribbling down notes in dark blue ink and furiously stamping forms or banging on computer keys.

The man looked to be about sixty years old. His face was more grizzled then the other people Dameon and Chloe had seen in the vault, and he appeared considerably older. His eyes were wide and such a dark brown they melded in with his pupils. His short grey hair curled around his ears like a mop on his head.

After two minutes, the man stopped what he was doing and finally looked up.

"Your names?"

Chloe was taken aback, "Chloe."

"Dameon Rayes."

The man leaned forward and rested his chin on his left fist, "Dameon Rayes. . ." he closed his eyes and seemed to mull over the name, "and Chloe. . .?"

"McGinty."

The man quickly jotted down their names on a sheet of yellow paper.

"My name is Lukasz Drybala, duly elected governor of Vault 4. What brings you to my vault?" Drybala's tone and facial expression were completely deadpan.

Dameon was surprised by Drybala's directness, he expected more official banter, "we. . .uh, we are looking for her sister. We heard she was taken to Quantico-"

"You heard she was taken to this vault?" Drybala didn't let him finish.

"No. . .we heard that she was taken to the base at Quantico. We stumbled across this vault while searching the base."

"Is she here?" Chloe interjected.

"Doubtful," Drybala scribbled down something, "we don't let in outsiders. . . but since you have come this far, what is her name?"

"Emily McGinty. She's sixteen and a little shorter than I am. She's blonde-"

"Is she mutated, as you are?" Drybala stared at Chloe with piercing eyes.

Chloe cringed at the word mutated. It made her feel like she was a monster. She immediately became self conscious of the leaves all over her body, "No. She's normal."

Drybala pressed a button on his phone, "Please search our personnel files for an Emily McGinty."

There was no response on the other end.

Dameon glanced around the room. He looked at the seal on the floor, and then at a picture of an old man in a white lab coat that was hanging on the left wall. The picture seemed to have a tiny shrine under it with a golden eagle statuette and two lit candles.

Drybala went silent again and entered something in his computer. His overly unconcerned, bureaucratic demeanor was making Dameon edgy; Dameon wanted to say something to change the mood, "So you're the. . . vault overseer?"

"God no. What a horrible term," Drybala didn't look up. He finished fiddling with a form and then stood up from his seat and walked over to the back windows, "I am the governor of this vault. You see, this is a democratic vault. One of the last bastions of democracy. It has been so since 2078 when my great, great, great grandfather, Edward Whormund," Drybala pointed to the picture of the stuffy-looking scientist, hanging on the wall, "seized control of this vault during a coup in the name of democracy and the Republic."

Drybala paused and glanced out the windows behind him into the darkness, "you. . .you are probably only familiar with those tiny test tube, experimentation vaults. This vault was from the first generation, numbers 0 through 10. While the later vaults held mere hundreds, this vault holds thousands," Drybala waived Chloe and Dameon over to the windows behind him.

They cautiously walked up next to him and peered through the glass. They realized that the tiny lights they were eye level with were actually fake stars that twinkled over a large open area of trees, grass, and a sprawling pond that lay five stories below, under a large dome.

"Wow," Chloe put her hand to the glass, "it's beautiful."

"The solarium. It was my idea to construct the solarium to keep the vault on a diurnal cycle; it makes it easier for the residents to sleep. The UV lights also help keep down Vault Depressive Syndrome."

Dameon scanned the solarium below. He could see a young couple splayed out on the grass, looking up at the fake stars from a long, checkered beach towel. "Do you know that there is an entire base of Talon Company mercenaries right above this vault?"

"Of course," Drybala directed Dameon and Chloe back to their seats, "unlike the other residents of Vault 4, I have been above ground. I know the outside world well. The Talon Company and I have reached an understanding. They keep away probing outsiders, and I keep them supplied with water from our purifier, produce from the greenhouse, and occasionally fresh meat from the menagerie. You entered through one of the hidden service tunnels under the old C.O's quarters; the above ground structure was lost to the bombs. I've long since sealed off the main entrance, but it would be suicide for the Talon Company to try to storm this vault. Between its byzantine layout, the vault security teams, and my Praetorian, it would be a deathtrap. We've had no security incidents in the past 45 years."

"What happened back then?"

A thin smile crept across Drybala's face, "actually. . .you two are the largest security concern I've ever had. Tell me, what led to your mutations? Do you know if they're contagious?"

Chloe went to say something but was hushed by a scowl from Dameon.

"An old science experiment," Dameon licked his dry lips.

Drybala sat in silence for a moment waiting for Dameon to continue, "well go on. This vault has extensive prewar files. I've actually read most of them. I have a deep love for history and the past."

Dameon stayed mum.

Drybala leaned forward on his desk, "we also have a medical clinic and an extremely talented surgical team. If you tell me what caused this, they may be able to be of some assistance."

"It was called H-271," Chloe said eagerly.

Drybala nodded, "I will send you to the clinic immediately for them to check you out. Perhaps they can offer a diagnosis," he pressed a button on his phone, "Nixus!"

One of the guards in sky blue armor opened the double doors and looked to Drybala

"Accompany our guests to the clinic. I will inform the staff of their condition," Drybala gave a brief smile to Chloe and then returned to his papers.

As Chloe walked towards the door, Dameon froze. He wanted to ask Drybala something but couldn't think of what, so he stood dumbly in place.

Drybala noticed his hesitation, "Mr. Rayes, why don't you come back here tomorrow at nine o'clock. We can discuss your prognosis and any other questions you may have then. In the meantime, I will have my staff search for the missing girl, Emily. I will also contact Eagle Claw and have them search for her as well. For now, just try to relax. . .you'll worry the residents. I'd prefer things remain serene," Drybala returned to his work.

Dameon only lingered a moment longer. The guard at the door looked at him with a completely empty expression as he walked out.

As Dameon and Chloe exited, Dyson, who had been waiting outside of the double doors, shuffled past them and over to Drybala.

"We should have quarantined them immediately. We could all be infected-" Dyson began.

Drybala waived him off, "its far, far too late now."

(***********************************************************************)

A doting nurse at the medical clinic entrance rushed Chloe down a long, white hall. Chloe was eager to finally see a doctor, it was getting more and more difficult for her to move and her body was half covered in itchy, suffocating foliage. She was so elated she didn't even remember to say goodbye to Dameon before she walked off.

Dameon was uncomfortable seeing Chloe go, and half embarrassed she didn't acknowledge him before leaving. The medical staff tried to ease him down the hall as well, but he resisted for a while, preferring to sit down on a chair to ponder his fate. He was always nervous of doctors; he didn't trust anyone enough to allow himself to be that vulnerable.

Well almost anyone. . .

Dameon pondered that thought while visions of being drugged by the medical team and waking up strapped to a gurney while they preformed sadistic experiments on him, raced through his mind.

With much cajoling, a boyish looking head surgeon was finally able to get Dameon to lay down on one of the clinic beds, promising him he wouldn't be sedated but merely anesthetized, while they probed him to determine his condition.

Barely convinced of his safety, Dameon lay down on a soft vault clinic bed as the doctors paced about him, readying their instruments. A tall doctor in a surgical coat put a small breathing mask over Dameon's mouth and began to pump nitrous oxide into his lungs.

Dameon's heart raced once the mask was strapped on. He wanted to rip it off at that moment, charge down the hall, grab Chloe, and escape from the vault.

Instead, he subdued his instincts and slowly inhaled a lungful of the rubbery smelling gas. It dulled the nagging pain from his back and limbs and he began to relax. Dameon took another breath and the pain become even weaker. Thoughts of flight and escape slowly faded.

As Dameon relaxed more and more deeply, one of the nurses in the room fumbled with a row of stainless steel implements laid out on a small surgical table by Dameon's side. To mask the grating sounds of clanking metal and pvssyring doctors, the nurse leaned over and flicked on a nearby radio.

A deep feminine voice crackled over the radio and intruded on Dameon's thoughts.

"Mmmm, hey baby,
DJ Cosmic Kate here,
Going to sing you a little lullaby,
Cause fearless leader says,
Its time to close your eyes,
And get some sleep.
So stop fussing in your cribs,
And cuddle up to this smooth song,
As you slowly drift away,
To old Louis Armstrong. . .hahaha"

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world. . .
I see skies of blue and clouds of white,
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world . ..*

Dameon inadvertently drifted off to sleep on the comfortable cot.

(******************************)

*"Wonderful World" written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss. Preformed by Louis Armstrong, 1968 ABC Records.

A/N: The first draft of this story was penned before the release of New Vegas, and as such, Drybala's 'Praetorian' have no connection whatsoever to Caesar's Legion.

interesting relationship between the TCM and Democracy of Vault Four. I wonder if Chloe will be cured or if Dameon's worst fears will be realized...guess I will have to keep reading to find out.

A/N: Thanks again Goris, your thoughts are much appreciated.

Chapter 16: Utopia
Dameon flew out of his bed the next morning. He had awoken in a completely paranoid state, rushing around his clinic room, not remembering nodding off, and sure he'd been taken advantage of, somehow.

As he studied his surroundings, he noticed the nurses had placed Chloe's sneak suit on the visitor's chair in his room. He grabbed it and slipped it over himself, before doing a brief body check to make sure everything felt normal. Assured he was still his usual self, he immediately rushed off to see Chloe.

He was intercepted in the hall by Dyson, who insisted on taking him back upstairs, for his meeting with Governor Drybala.

(****************************)

"Mr. Rayes, I have your complete medical evaluation right here, would you like to peruse it?" Drybala was in a better mood then yesterday. He casually waived a manila file at Dameon.

Dameon plopped down in a chair opposite Drybala. He glanced at Nixus and Crixus who stayed in the office this time, positioned by the windows on either side of Drybala, next to the flags, standing completely still at attention.

"Where is Chloe?" Dameon locked eyes with the governor.

"Unlike you, she requested immediate surgery and heavy antibiotic treatment for her condition. I am told she has made it past the ordeal but will need an additional few hours of recovery."

Dameon grabbed the manila file and leafed thought it.

"It seems Vault 4 is in no danger from the bacteria that have made a home in your body. They require radiation to be able to spread and thrive and in this vault those conditions are absent."

Dameon began to turn through the pages faster, annoyed, "but why did it do this to me?"

"You and Ms. McGinty were highly irradiated from the blast, making you a perfect incubator. The bacteria is carrying out its metabolic processes in you, encrusting the radiation and petrifying you in the process. . .as for Ms. McGinty, the exact source of her condition is more elusive."

"What blast?" Dameon put the file down in paranoia.

Drybala nodded to himself with a smile, "Ms. McGinty was more cooperative about being treated than you were. She told the staff how you were exposed to H-271. We actually have no records on the H2 project but we found the presence of unknown bacteria in our biopsies. As I said before, we were able to deduce the H2 bacteria thrive on radiation. . .as to why flora have bonded to Ms. McGinty and rooted down to her bones, we are unsure. We theorize that the extreme conditions under which H-271 was released could have caused a random mutation. As it is now, the bacteria have bonded with her body, which somehow makes her vulnerable to colonization from ambient pollen. Ideally, if the bacteria cannot be killed, she should remain in a sterile environment."

Dameon strained to follow Drybala's quick words.

"Hopefully you could be treated as well."

"I'm fine now," Dameon began. While Dameon had slept, the doctors had freed many of his joints of the overgrowths of rocky crust and bone spurs that had caused them to fuse together. He could move much more freely, and the pain caused by his bones grinding against one another was diminished.

"Whatever you desire. I have no information about the missing sister though. My apologies," Drybala opened a desk drawer and fiddled with something inside of it. He waited for Dameon to say something and then made a shrug, "If you don't have anymore questions-"

"That's it then? You're going to let Chloe and I leave?"

"You can leave if you'd like. It's up to your companion if she wants to stay in Vault 4. I think she might prefer life here. . .we have the proper facilities to care for her condition. This is a safe, comfortable place, Mr. Rayes. The other residents and I have worked hard to make it and keep it that way. You see Mr. Whormund on that wall."

Dameon glanced back at the picture and the shrine.

"Not all of the US government was part of the cabal you call the Enclave. There were some true patriots, true believers in liberty. Mr. Whormund, my ancestor, was one of those patriots. He was one of the lieutenants of Quaere Verum, a secret organization that sought to undermine the Enclave and reinstate the primacy of the Republic. Those plans ended with the devastation of the war. . .but not here. Not in this vault. Not in Vault 4. Quaere Verum lives on; true democracy has taken hold. In the generations we've lived here I think we've constructed a model society that any American would want to be a part of. Take a look around for yourself, Mr. Rayes. In fact, I'll arrange for you and Ms. McGinty to be given a brief, hospitable tour of our home. If you and your friend still choose to leave, my Praetorian will safely escort you back to the outskirts of Quantico tomorrow morning."

"Can I see Chloe now?" Dameon stood up.

"Of course. Crixus, escort Mr. Rayes back to his companion and accompany him-"

"I don't need a chaperone," Dameon looked at the two Praetorian guards. He couldn't tell which one was Crixus. Their empty, soulless eyes made him edgy.

"I would be remiss to forsake every security protocol. For my peace of mind, and for the comfort of the vault residents, please don't feel insulted."

Dameon stood up from his chair, "any idea why someone would have seen wastelanders being taken to the base above this Vault? They saw them go into the hanger we dropped down from," he studied Drybala's eyes for any hesitation.

"None at all Mr. Rayes. We ask nothing of the outside world. They ask nothing of us."

Dameon walked out of Drybala's office with Crixus close behind him.

(**************************************************************************)

"Through here is the Solarium, and over there is the theater and the Vault Market, but you'd know that. That's where you dropped in from," Erika, the bubbly blonde vault tour guide pointed towards a pair of glass doors with a giggle.

Through the doors was a large open park, full of vault dwellers who were idly strolling on meandering paths through the shrubbery and trees. The trees and high grass inside the Solarium sat under a huge domed sky that had a blindingly bright artificial sun at its zenith. Past the far glass wall of the Solarium, opposite Chloe and Dameon, was the entrance to the menagerie. Chickens and a row of piglets were huddled into small hay lined pens in the far corner of the structure.

"I've never seen a chicken," Chloe smiled to herself.

The doctors had cleared up much of Chloe's face and arms. Her body was pop-marked with bandages and glistened from antibiotic gel. She was perky because of her improved condition and had been unusually talkative with their guide, Erika.

"Oh yes, we have chickens, pigs, and a few cows. We used to have two goats, Rosco and Lila, but they never bred with each other and died of old age. I'd take you to see the animals, but they said you shouldn't be around them or the plants until you're cured," Erika glanced over to the market. A cute vault dweller boy caught her eye; she gave him a smile.

Chloe pressed herself against the glass windows of the Solarium and looked in at the park.

Dameon was uncomfortable with his mangled appearance around the perfect, youthful throngs of vault dwellers. He felt unbelievably ugly in comparison. As he scanned the pretty faces through the Solarium window he realized how youthful they all were. No one looked over forty.

While Chloe continued people watching, Dameon glanced back at the long vault halls that branched off in a maze around him. He could see the Vault Market were he had crashed landed the previous day off to his left. The Solarium was to his right. A row of jammed-packed classrooms were behind him, with strange looking goats painted on the classroom walls and doors.

As he walked over and glanced into a classroom he noticed that the teacher was no older than a teenager himself. Dameon paused, the doctors had been young too, the crowd in the market, the vault security guards, everyone he had seen had been youthful and perky.

Everyone but him. . .

Dameon walked back to the Solarium entrance and stared inside at one, lone, grizzled old man who was sitting on a park bench off in the far corner. The man was idly throwing crumbs of stale bread rations into the water of the fish pond.

Erika followed Dameon's gaze, "there are actually two species of carp in the Solarium pond. I study biology. I want to be a doctor, maybe someday," her perfect smile beamed. Her vault suit was tight on her slender figure. Her skin was pale despite all her time tanning under the artificial sun.

"Governor Drybala built the Solarium?" Dameon smiled back to Erika.

"Yes, a long time ago."

"What about the menagerie? He built that too?"

"Uh-huh," Erika's face radiated joy.

"The Vault Market?"

Erika nodded.

"So what did this vault used to look like, before Drybala? What was here then?"

"What do you mean?" Erika bit her thick red lips.

"Before he built these things," Dameon turned around, "what was vault life like back then? Where did he get all the materials to build these things?"

"Oh," Erika squinted, "I don't know. . .I think the Solarium was a big auditorium or something. I really don't know the history of Vault 4, but I know everything that's here now," she smiled to Chloe, "it's so great to be able to show someone new around. We've never had a guest before."

Chloe hadn't moved from the window. She watched the couples walk hand-in-hand and the children play under the fake sun.

"Would anyone else know?" Dameon scratched his head.

"Uh," Erika's blue eyes darted around wildly, "I could get you a Vault 4 history book from one of the classrooms . . .or you could ask Governor Drybala. He's the official vault historian."

"Did he write the history books too then?"

"Hmmm. . ." Erika squinted in thought.

"Dameon," Chloe interrupted Erika and looked away from the park, turning towards him.

"Yeah?"

"They told me I could stay here if I wanted and they would treat me. Did they offer to treat you?"

"Yeah," Dameon's heart sank. It felt like someone was squeezing his stomach, "are, are you going to stay?"

Chloe nodded, "I know Emily's not here. . .but they told me that they can cure me. . . and I can't keep going out there."

"We can find her. Just come with me," Dameon put his arms on her shoulders. His eyes seemed to sparkle at the thought of continuing their journey.

"No. I'm not going to find Emily on my own and I can't be with you anymore, Dameon. I know how much you've helped me, but I've lost myself with you. I don't know who I am out there, and I hate the person I've been forced to become. That's not who I am. I know you want to find Emily, I understand how import that is to you now. I hope you do," Chloe hugged Dameon, "I pray you do; but I can't keep going with you."

Chloe kissed Dameon on his hard, rock-like lips.

"I want you to know that I loved you Dameon. . .maybe briefly, but deeply. I've been given a second chance at life, a third even. I have to use it, and I've never seen a better place to. . . I can't be anyone good out in the wasteland. I'm not strong enough to help anyone. Maybe down here I can-"

"I love you too," Dameon mumbled. He hugged Chloe tighter. He didn't want to let her go, "if you come back with me we could-"

"I'm going to stay. I pray you have a safe journey back," Chloe eased out of Dameon's hug, "say goodbye to me before you leave."

"Don't worry. . .I will," Dameon's eyes felt like they were tearing up.

"If you find Emily-"

"If I find her, I'll bring her here."

Chloe gave Dameon a final smile before she turned back to Erika. They began chatting like old friends.

Dameon shadowed them for the rest of the tour, until Chloe headed off for her second round of surgery.

Chapter 17: Dystopia
Dameon paced about the endless, twisting corridors of the vault for hours, looking at the glib vault dwellers, the edgy security guards, and the beautiful architecture of Vault 4. Like a metaphor for his life, no matter how far he wandered in any direction, the twisting halls always seemed to lead him back to the same place. He had never felt so alone.

As his feet began to tire, Dameon leaned against the windows of the Vault Market and saw a crowd eating lunch. Crixus was still shadowing him, following twenty or so paces behind him, watching his every move with his empty doll eyes. Dameon scowled at him and then scanned the crowd.

He saw one familiar face among the masses.

"What's your name?" Dameon walked over to the old man.

The old man had walked from his seat in the Solarium over to the Vault Market while Dameon had been out wandering. He was now sitting at a small, silver dining table, while picking at a plate of vault rations.

"No meat today. . .just more soybeans. . ." the old man shook his wizened head at Dameon.

"Who are you?" Dameon sat down at the table in a seat across from the old man.

Crixus, who was still following Dameon, moved in closer and leaned against an ornate column.

"I should be asking you that. You're a strange looking fellow," the old man smiled to Dameon. His teeth were gnarled and yellow.

"I'm Dameon. The outsider."

"An outsider," the old man's eyes glimmered.

"Yeah, I'm from the outside. Big blue skies, wide open plains."

"Must be horrible," the old man shook his head and went back to stirring his thick bean porridge rations.

"You grew up in this vault?"

"Everyone grew up here. Except you I guess."

"Aren't you curious about the outside?"

"What would I want from up there? I don't need sky," the old man chuckled to himself. His vault suit looked sloppy and dirty. He continued to stir the soupy liquid in front of him, swirling it into a shallow vortex.

"Where is everyone else your age?"

"Heh?"

"Everyone here is so young. Thirty, forty tops. Except you and. . .and the governor."

"Haha, have you seen Margret Samuels. She's 66. That's older than me," the old man smiled and dipped a thin piece of burned toast into the porridge. He popped the toast into his mouth and chewed with his mouth agape.

"Any one else?"

"Hmm, Mitch Gooding. . .but he's got Alzheimer's now. . .we used to play stickball together in the gymnasium, ages ago. I won every game."

"Okay, but why aren't there more elderly people here? I've looked around and there's no one your age. It's nagging me."

"They're all dead," the old man casually smiled and swallowed another mouthful of his bean soup.

Dameon couldn't help but nervously laugh, "there must be a reason for that. A plague, a famine, a war. What happened to the all the old folks?"

The man hummed a droll tune to himself for a moment while looking up at the florescent ceiling lights, "I don't like the movie tonight. Goodbye My Darling. . .just more prewar drivel like that DJ. . .Kate."

"How is life in this vault?" Dameon tried to bring the old man back down to earth.

"It's wonderful, haven't you had a look around?" the old man liberally salted his soup.

"Yeah. . .hmm, what was it like was before Drybala?"

"Governor Drybala? Ha. . .," the old man wiped a stream of drool from his chin.

"What was it like under the governor before him?"

The old man glanced over to Crixus with an empty smile, "before the governor. . .bad?"

"Bad how?"

"No laundry. No laundry until tomorrow. . .but I can't wear this all day," the old man grasped his dirty vault suit. A glob of soybeans had fallen onto it, "ah well."

"Come on, I'm an outsider. I'll be out of here tomorrow. No one cares what you tell me. What was it like; you must have been here then."

"What are you asking?" the old man squinted his sagging eyes and put down his spoon.

"I want to know what happened here. I don't believe that patriotic, democratic crap Drybala fed me. I just want to make sure this place is actually safe before I -"

"Governor Drybala was elected every time. Hehehe. I voted for him."

"How many times did you vote for him?"

"Oh. . .wow. . .ten, no twelve, or. . .fifteen times. Fifteen times," the old man nodded.

"Did anyone ever run against him?"

"That's silly."

"Why?" Dameon peered back and checked to see how close Crixus was standing to them.

"Who would want a new governor? Things are good here. You want to know about the past? I remember the past. There was nothing good about the past. Now, now everything is. . .serene."

"I'm just curious what it was like. When you were a child you must-"

"I used to have bad nightmares as a child. Every night I could hear screaming . . . it echoed through the halls. . .all night long. You had to fall asleep listening to it. . .and it was so dark in the Vault all the time. The noise. . .stays with you. ."

"But not now?"

"Heavens no. Since the governor came here the tunnels have stayed quiet," the old man slapped the table.

"So he wasn't always here? What was-"

"I was just a child. I don't know why you're asking me, outsider. Ask the governor, he knows," the old man pushed away his soup and gave a fatherly smile.

"If he wasn't always here then where did Drybala come from? Somewhere outside?"

"Somewhere outside," the old man repeated emptily.

"Yeah, outside. But where?"

"Uhh. . . .big blue skies?"

(**************************************************************************)

"Its right down this hall Ms. McGinty," the nurse smiled to Chloe and led Chloe by the hand down to the surgical ward.

Chloe was still in a state of euphoria from having escaped the desolate wastes of the outside world. The food she had been given was edible, her company pleasant. Smooth, relaxing music played over the vault PA system most of the day. People smiled to her as she walked by.

It was a dream world.

Chloe paused in her step to sneeze. The nurse let go of her hand and shuffled away to speak with a doctor.

After wiping her nose, Chloe glanced down at her arms and hands. She expected the foliage would have already begun to bud again, but her treatment seemed to have [censored] its growth. She could only see a few shallow bumps on her skin where the seeds were starting to germinate.

She smiled to herself and glanced out of the clinic window, at the lower levels and the crowds passing by below. She furrowed her brow. She didn't remember seeing this particular area during the tour. She leaned against the glass and thought about her body becoming normal again.

Suddenly, Chloe saw something in the crowd below. She leaned closer into the glass and stared down at the passers by. Among the random vault dwellers milling about, she saw a short blonde girl with sparkling blue eyes and a radiating smile. Chloe recognized every feature of the girl's body and face from memory. She could have painted her right then and there. The sight made Chloe's heart race, her pupils dilated.

"Emily?"

Chloe began to knock on the window trying to get her sister's attention. The girl below didn't look up. She began to walk away down the long, lower halls.

"Emily! Emily!" Chloe was certain it was her. She continued to bang on the glass as a group of doctors approached her.

"How do I get down there? I have to get down there!" Chloe's mind raced frantically. She desperately looked down the hall for a way down to the lower level.

"Ms. McGinty," one of the doctors put his hand on her shoulder, "please calm down. We need to get you prepped for surgery."

"I have to see her, Emily is-"

The doctor waived over a pair of nurses, "please Ms. McGinty, it's this way."

"No," Chloe broke free of him and tried to run down the hall.

One of the expressionless Praetorians restrained her before she was able to leave.

(**************************************************************************)

"Have you decided to be treated?" the young nurse looked up from her desk and smiled at Dameon.

"No. I'm just here to visit Chloe, the girl who came in with me," Dameon sniffed.

The nurse fiddled around with the computer in front of her for a few moments, "I'm sorry, I don't have a record of a Chloe."

"Chloe McGinty. We came in together; we're the only two outsiders here. The girl with leaves coming out of her [censored] body!"

"Please relax, sir," the nurse turned back to her computer and fumbled with the keys, "ah okay. She is here, but she's been sequestered."

"Sequestered?" Dameon gritted his teeth and loomed closer to the now nervous nurse.

"Yes. . .I'm very sorry but you can't see her right now. She's in surgery. Maybe in a few days you could-"

"[censored] a few days, I'm seeing her now," Dameon shook his head and began to walk down the hall.

"Sir, sir! You can't - please don't do that!" the nurse called down the hall, "I will have to contact security!"

Dameon glanced back. Crixus had begun to walk after him at a steady, deliberate pace. Before the guard got too close, Dameon flicked on the active camouflage of the sneak suit and disappeared from view, blending in with the pattern of the windows and walls.

The nurse's jaw dropped.

She pressed the panic button under her station.

A/N: Double update today. See the post above.

Chapter 18: King of Kings
"There he is! Stop him now!" Dyson screamed. He and a dozen other vault security guards charged after the shadowy figure. Their weapons' laser sights swept the crowded vault corridors.

Dameon ran down the maze of halls at full speed. The security guards were hesitant to fire, as every now and then some hapless vault dweller would dart out of a side corridor and block their shot.

"He went right! He went right!" a security guard swung right and kicked back open the closing door to the stairwell. He shot a long red beam of laser light up the metal staircase, looking for the awkward interference pattern of Dameon's sneak suit.

Dameon moved like the wind. He jumped over a railing and kicked open another door. He took off out of sight.

"Level 5! Level 5! Let's go!" Dyson ran out in front of his team and took a shot at a translucent Dameon who ducked behind a corner.

Flashing alarm bulbs lit up the vault corridors like strobe lights. There was no audible alarm, but most of the halls were empty and deserted. The lights had been dimmed.

Chloe was nowhere to be found. Dameon had searched every room of the medical clinic before vault security and the ominous Praetorian had smoked him out, but she was gone. Dameon had then scrambled across every level he could access and kicked open every door he could find for any sign of her. He found nothing but confused vault dwellers and security guards out for blood.

"[censored]! He went up again!"

The security guards burst into another stairwell. Dameon's footsteps pounded the stairs two stories above them.

"He's going towards the Governor's office!" Dyson screamed. He snatched a walkie-talkie from his side and yelled into the receiver.

Dameon exited the stairwell and ran down a long hall that ended in the massive doors that blocked off Drybala's office. His feet glided across the tile floor, they didn't seem to touch the ground.

As he came within reach of the giant oak door, he felt something strike him square in the jaw.

"Ah!" Dameon was sent flying back into the wall. His back smashed against it, and bits of tile rained down. Dameon's sneak suit cammo flicked off as another blow sunk deep into his chest, almost knocking the wind out of him.

Crixus, Nixus, or one of the other identical Praetorians hit Dameon in the chest with the force of a Sentry bot. Dameon collapsed to his knees and the guard delivered two swift kicks to his rib cage, before lowering his FN FAL at Dameon's face.

Dameon sprang to his feet and grabbed the barrel of the rifle. He and the Praetorian struggled over the rifle for a second, before the guard ripped the gun from Dameon's hands and deftly wielded the gun like a short sword, driving the barrel into Dameon's body and bludgeoning him with the wooden stock

As Dameon went to block the Praetorian's blows, the guard grabbed Dameon's arm, quickly twisted it sideways, and threw Dameon face first down to the ground. He then instantly readied his rifle and fired a round into Dameon's back.

The bullet didn't hurt Dameon nearly as much as the Praetorian's blows. Dameon got back to his feet and punched the Praetorian in the face as hard as he could. The Praetorian didn't even blink. With lightning speed, he punched Dameon in his temple and drove his elbow into his face.

Dameon's lip split in two. Blood poured down his sneak suit. From his knees, Dameon grabbed the Praetorian's leg and tried to flip him over, but the guard kneed Dameon in his bloodied chin.

As Dameon absorbed the blow, he drew his knife from the sneak suit and jammed it down between the bones of the Praetorian's blocking forearm. The knife went all the way through until the handle was even with the skin.

The Praetorian paused, took a step back, and pulled the knife out, in one slow motion. His face showed no pain. His arm didn't bleed.

"What the [censored] are you things?" Dameon muttered.

The Praetorian held the knife, blade down in his fists. He waived the blade in the air and then brought in down on Dameon's knee and slashed it across Dameon's face. Dameon went to tackle the Praetorian, but he dodged his pounce and shouldered him into the wall.

The Praetorian then smashed the knife down into Dameon's shoulder.

"[censored]!" Dameon staggered back and tried to pull out the blade. Fifteen more Praetorian guards charged down the hall, rifles ready. They stopped a few feet from Dameon.

"That's enough!" Drybala's voice blared over the Vault PA system, "let him in."

The Praetorians instantly relaxed. The guard Dameon had been fighting adjusted his stance, brushed off his arm, and opened the door to Drybala's office. He even waived Dameon inside.

Dameon staggered into the office and over to Drybala's desk.

The old man leaned back in his chair, completely unconcerned, smiling to Dameon as he entered.

"Mr. Rayes. I see that showing you the smallest modicum of decency and hospitality was a mistake."

"Where is Chloe!" Dameon screamed.

"She asked not to see you."

Dameon charged Drybala and went to grab him by the neck from across the desk, but his hands bounced off a blue kinetic barrier that sprang up the moment Dameon got too close.

"Some things cannot be solved with fists, Mr. Rayes. Even fists as strong as yours."

Dameon's eyes glowed like hellfire, "you're a liar! Where is she! Give her to me now!"

"Give her to you? Is she your property?"

"No, and she's not your property either. . .unlike everyone else in this brainwashed vault."

"Brainwashed?" Drybala chuckled to himself, "is that what you think? No one is brainwashed here. Haven't you spoken with any of the residents? They're just happy."

"I've spoken to them. This vault is built on lies. Lies about democracy, lies about your [censored] great, great, grand -"

"You must have spent some time with one of our more senior residents. . . doesn't really matter. They are not lies, Mr. Rayes. They are ideas. People need ideas in order to live, in order to be in harmony. I've seen the outside. I've walked the wastes from the Capital Wasteland to the Plains of Ronto. I know the hell that passes for a daily existence out there. I will not let that reign in here. I knew that if the people of this vault were inspired," Drybala turned to the picture of Whormund, who had a sterner expression on his face than usual.

"Inspired? Inspired by [censored]. . ."

"No, actually. I realize I have misled you, but Mr. Whormund did lead a coup in this vault. Merely two months after the war. Once the Enclave's plans for the 'new' America were revealed, he severed all communication lines between the Enclave and Vault 4. He saw through their lies, he wanted to stop the tests, the suffering, the tyranny. While his success was short lived, and Enclave rule was restored, his importance here was in his ideals. He seeded this vault with the idea of freedom and democracy."

"There is no freedom here. You're a dictator, another overseer-"

"Quid est democratas,* Mr. Rayes?" Drybala smiled, "what is democracy? Three hundred and forty three old men forming a rebel government in Philadelphia to assure they could continue to own slaves and avoid taxes? The racist, jingoistic collection of rabble that interned the Japanese and the Chinese? Perhaps the Enclave? No. . .democracy and freedom are dreams. Ideas. I am a true student of history. I realize that the history we are given is not just a random collection of facts, it is a tool to inspire people to greatness. Just as Mr. Edward Whormund inspired me-"

"The people who were in this vault when you got here must not have been inspired."

"This vault was nothing when I came here. A few meager survivors clawing one another's eyes out over scraps of food. . . you see, after the great coup failed, order degenerated. Various factions arose that turned into criminal gangs who controlled each level. By the time I arrived, they lived like raiders do above ground. . .they used hang people from the railings of the Vault Mall and [censored] women in the shadows of the gymnasium. You could hear the echoes of their screams throughout the night. Their constant turf wars and infighting ruined the water purifier, destroyed the electrical system, and sullied a third of the food stocks . . . do you think those thieves, rapists, and murders were ready for democracy or freedom? Do you think they could even understand such high ideals?"

"So you killed them?"

"No. I made them rebuild what they had destroyed. I banished them to lowest levels so that by their labor they could create a new world here. After their labors were done, and the vault was rebuilt, I released the few that remained and could accept this new, life back to their children. Those children had been given an education and an inspiring history; in the hope that they would be inspired to greatness instead of violence, knowledge instead of ignorance, democracy instead of the tyranny of arms. . . you see, democracy needs order to be able to thrive. I am that order," Drybala picked up a file from his desk, "and as my sources on the outside have informed me, you are disorder, Mr. 'Demon Rayes.' You thrive on anarchy. You are chaos. Just like the world you came from, that hell above ground. . ."

"You're not order; you're only in control because of your guards."

"You and I are actually much alike, believe it or not. Both of us raised ourselves from childhood, spent our youth roaming the wastes. With the aide of my Praetorian and what we could scavenge from other vaults and the world above, I seeded this vault to grow into a better society, and so you have seeded the outside. Your infection, I am told, was the cause of the DC bloom. You have restored life to the desolate wasteland; you have made it suitable for civilization to rise from the ashes, anew. I had always dreamed of spreading the work I have begun here outside of the walls of this vault to the world above. Ironically, that was why this vault was constructed in the first place, to re-colonize a wasted earth. However, I feared that the day the wastes would finally be ripe for settlement would not arrive during my lifetime," Drybala leaned forward in his chair, "but you Mr. Rayes have truncated that timeline by decades, perhaps centuries. You have made it possible for me to spread what I've done here, above. I had hoped that if you'd seen what had been accomplished here you would consider-"

"It was you," the thought hit Dameon as he stared at the seal on the carpet; a soaring eagle, "you're why the Talon Company is gathering up people."

"Yes, those wastelanders will be the first wave of newly inspired colonists. They will soon be sent out to tame the wastes under our banner, until it is settled enough for the residents who live here to emerge from this cocoon. I've paved the way for their return with the Talon Company. At my direction, they have kept the wastes unstable, divided for all these years. Cowing the Brotherhood, the Outcasts, the Enclave, even the Supermutants, making sure no faction became powerful enough to unite the desert. Uniting the desert, rebuilding America, that is our job. From the chaos out there now, we will build. . .a brave new world."

The double doors creaked open. The Praetorians loomed in the threshold, rifles aimed at Dameon, ready to fire.

Dameon glanced back at them, "you going to kill me?"

"No, your infection will accomplish that soon enough. I'd actually prefer that you live forever. Wherever you go, you spread your disease, which rejuvenates the land. You're a modern day Johnny Appleseed, allowing forests, grasslands, and prairies to rise from the ashes. I'd prefer that you wander the wastes forever, making them ripe for my picking."

"[censored] you. The only place I'll wander is down here. I won't leave without Chloe."

"Do you think she belongs up there? Is that in her best interest? Out there she'll die, like you. In here. . .your place is outside, Mr. Rayes. In the anarchy, the violence, the fray. You have sullied the serenity of this vault long enough. If you ever set foot here again I will have you torn to pieces and scatter your ashes across the wasteland. Ms. McGinty's place is here now. Studying her unique mutations may help us devise better ways to get our crops to thrive. But, if you ever come back here I will turn her into another tree in the Solarium. Do you understand? You will never see her again. You will never return. You belong up there."

Nixus, Crixus, and the other Praetorian guards took a step inside of the office.

"But now. . .now I shall suffer fools no longer. My Praetorian will escort you to the drainage exit of the vault. It should put you out of view of Quantico. Do what you will, but do not return here. Go," Drybala motioned towards the door.

Dameon didn't move a muscle.

"Mr. Rayes, I'm only going to offer this once."

Dameon slowly stood up. Dozens of Praetorians flanked him on either side with their stone cold, empty faces.

The Praetorians led Dameon to the stairwell and down a narrow corridor towards a small emergency exit of Vault 4.

As they approached the end of the corridor, Nixus opened the barricaded exit door, revealing a narrow, earthen tunnel.

Dameon bent over and squinted down into the tunnel. At the far end, he could just make out a speck of light.

"Am I supposed to crawl down there?" Dameon sniffed.

Crixus simply motioned Dameon towards the tunnel.

Dameon didn't move, he just glared at the Praetorian guards.

The Praetorians opened their mouths for the first time. They whooped like wild Indians and cackling hyenas. Their strange chants unnerved Dameon, pressuring him forward.

Dameon crawled down the tunnel towards the glimmer of daylight.

(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

A/N: *"Quid est veritas?" - Pontius Pilate to Jesus - "what is truth?"

Part III: The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 19: Francis Scott Key Trail & Campground

"Urg! Ga! Fah! Ahh!"

Kiera kicked the dead deathclaw over and over again in its teeth with her steel toed boot until one of its massive fangs shattered into shards of enamel. She then paused and caught her breath while wiping the beading sweat from her forehead. As she panted for a moment, she leaned over and hocked a wad of spit into the face of the dead beast as a final insult.

Kiera felt light headed. The adrenaline had worn off and she was now completely exhausted. She put her plasma pistol into its holster on the back of her waist band and then she slowly walked over to a nearby picnic table and sat down, sweeping away a trio of dusty lunch boxes and cherry bombs that lay in front of her.

Kiera glanced around at the campground. Her two companions lay dead and mutilated in the short grass that surrounded the double row of picnic tables, their bodies had been torn to pieces by the fearsome creature. Slivers of armor and pools of blood dotted the green grass shoots and clung to the weeds. A few feet up the hill from where she was sitting, Kiera could see her dead pack Brahmin, still laden with barrels and crates of water from the Jefferson Purifier. Its head hung onto its body by a thread where the deathclaw had nearly taken it off with its enormous claws. Its carcass was wedged against the corner of a rusted out camper. The Brotherhood's golden insignia still sparkled brightly on its side.

Kiera rested her head on the old picnic table for a moment and then rubbed her hands together to try and wipe off the blood and dusty grime. Nothing came off; it felt like the dirt was glued onto her skin and had become a part of her. Her whole body had become caked in desert dust like she was wearing an itchy body suit.

Kiera walked over to the dead Brahmin and drew her knife. She then cut the large barrel of water off the dead cow's back. Kiera turned the three foot long barrel right side up and pried off the top with her knife blade. As it opened, she could feel the warm water vapor waft out. She began to throw water onto her face with cupped hands and drag it across her armored body. After a few seconds, she unfastened her Rivet City armor and tossed her shoulder and briast plates onto the ground beside her. Now wearing a long sleeved cloth shirt and loose leather pants, she knelt beside the barrel and tipped it over.

The lukewarm water rushed down her hair and face and soaked her clothing. The dirt was washed away from her skin in an instant. The excess water pooled around a patch of brilliant desert flowers next to the dead Brahmin.

"Ah-hem," Dameon tried to cough.

He was leaning up against the back side of the rusted camper. His gun was slung around his back, his arms hung limply at his sides. He didn't move for a second waiting for the woman to react.

Kiera instantly grabbed her pistol and menaced Dameon with its neon green barrel, "back off, now!"

She clutched the trigger with white knuckles. Water dripped down her jet black hair.

Dameon put his hands up, showing he was unarmed, "I need a drink."

Kiera squinted at Dameon while looking down the plasma pistol's sight. She then slowly lowered the weapon, "fine, you can have what's in this. The bottles are mine."

She walked away from the half empty barrel and over to her dead Brahmin. She lifted two crates of water bottles off its back and stacked them on the grass and scrub, before ringing out her hair onto the dry soil, while glaring at the ugly, mutated stranger.

Dameon scooped up mouthful after mouthful of water from the barrel until he quenched his nagging thirst. He then wiped his dripping chin and scanned the campground. After noting the two dead and badly mauled Rivet City guards and the nearly decapitated Brahmin, Dameon walked up next to the dead deathclaw. He studied its body; it was riddled with shallow bullet holes that were no more than flesh wounds. Its scissor-like hands were terrifying even in death; its face looked like the devil with long horns and fanged teeth.

There was a large hole in the creature's left eye that had been made by the scorching hot stream of a plasma bolt.

"Nice shot, you must be pretty accurate," Dameon looked at Kiera and pointed towards the deathclaw's face.

Kiera glanced over to him, "yeah. You remember that," she tucked her pistol away and strapped her armor back on. She then hoisted the two crates of water bottles onto her back and stepped on top of a small pile of rocks to get a better take on her surroundings.

"It got your friends?"

"Friends?" Kiera shook the water out of her ears like a dog, "came just after sun-up. They were still dozing. I was taking a piss behind the campers. Came back when I heard the screams and put it down in one shot. Little too late," she bit her lip.

Dameon nodded, "why are you all the way out here? Thought the Rivet City caravans stuck to the trade routes."

"Well, we were supposed to deliver the water to Big Town. Got sidetracked by some raiders south of there and then got lost in a dust storm. Thought we could hunker down in TenPenny and wait it out, but those Talon Company pricks were attacking the place. We felt our way around and wound up here."

Dameon walked back over to the barrel for a final gulp of the lukewarm liquid.

"What's your story? You're the only ghoul I've seen in months."

"Why's that. . .plague?" Dameon gritted his teeth.

"Yeah, thought you were all dead."

"Last of the breed," Dameon smiled. His smile was full of gaps; half of his blackening teeth had fallen out, "where are you headed now?"

Kiera hesitated in answering him. She had a twisted, untrusting expression on her face, "back to Rivet City. There's nothing out here."

"I'm going home to MegaTon. Come with me if you want, be a good place to sell that water."

Kiera rolled her eyes, "yeah thanks, but I don't need a tag-along. I'll do fine by myself," she began to walk north, up a gentle hill.

Dameon watched her walk away for a few seconds, "Really? Cause Rivet City's east of here. You're walking towards the Yao Guai dens. They get territorial."

Kiera turned around and stared at the disfigured stranger. She then glanced up at the rocky hills ahead of her. On one of the far off outcrops she could see the outline of a large cave where a Yao Guai had likely made his winter home.

Kiera nodded to herself, "so what do you want then?"

"Give me some of those bottles and I'll guide you to MegaTon. I'm good at navigating. . .and I've got nothing else to trade."

Kiera let the crates drop from her back. They crashed to the ground with a dull thud, "fine then. . .you can be my pack Brahmin," she walked away from the crates towards the rising sun.

Dameon shouldered the crates and began to follow in Kiera's path. The desert around them was full of tiny red, yellow, and orange flowers that fluttered in the cool morning wind.

Chapter 20: Empty House

"God damnit Stockholm, it's been half an hour," Kiera shouted up to the sentry. She was waiting in the throng of humanity that crowded the metallic front gate to MegaTon.

Since the Jefferson Purifier had been activated, and the bloom had taken hold, people had flocked to MegaTon from all over the D.C. area. The newly arrived masses of humanity intimidated the town's residents who worried about losing order and control to the hundreds upon hundreds of new comers. To prevent themselves from being overpowered, MegaTon's guards only allowed a few dozen newcomers in at a time, while the rest camped out in front of MegaTon's imposing steel walls, forming a sprawling shanty town nearly as big and boisterous as MegaTon itself.

"Five minutes, then I'll take the next twenty!" the sentry shouted back. He looked behind himself, down the wall into MegaTon, while keeping his arm on the switch that opened up the front gates.

The crowd pushed in against Kiera. Dameon would have been lost to the sea of humanity, but the transients kept a safe distance from him, not wanting to catch whatever strange disease had disfigured and warped his body.

As the front gate began to creak open, a few mud covered travelers began to trickle out of the town. They pulled down their hoods and lowered goggles over their eyes to brace themselves for the harsh wastes beyond.

Kiera ducked under a Brahmin and pushed her way past an old, disheveled beggar, over to Dameon.

"I'll take my water back now. You can have half," she snatched a crate from Dameon's back and darted back to her spot in the front of the line.

As outsiders began to pour in through the open gate, Stockholm screamed at them to be more orderly. After thirty or so transients pushed their way through, including Kiera, he pulled the lever to close the gate. It began to groan as the gears turned it shut.

"Hey, come on Stockholm. I live here. Let me go home. Open the [censored] gate!" Dameon glared up at the sentry from the crowd.

Stockholm peered down at the ghoulish looking man below. The crowd of transients parted around him. There was something familiar about the stranger, "who the [censored] are you?"

"Don't you remember me?"

Stockholm stayed silent.

"Your old pal, Dameon?"

(**************************************************************************)

Dameon clutched his crate of purified water bottles as he passed through the threshold into MegaTon. The town was more packed then usual, the noise of the crowds was almost deafening. Settlers and residents had to svck in their chests to be able to slip past one another on the crowded gangways. The air reeked of Brahmin manure and waste from the latrines. Obnoxious peddlers hawked cargo and snake oil to anyone that passed by. The destitute died in the dust or in the mud strewn streets.

Dameon couldn't wait to get home. He began to walk towards his house, the first shack on the left. As he approached his front door, he noticed Lucas and Harden Simms were camped out in front of his doorstep, waiting for him to come by.

They were both wearing kitschy cowboy get-up that used to make Dameon laugh but now irritated him. They peered up from below their beaded hats, rifles ready. Stockholm covered them from the sentry tower, while a few edgy mercs stood around looking tough and doing nothing.

Lucas Simms dropped his cigarette into the dust and snuffed it with his boot as Dameon approached, "Dameon, no one here had any idea what happened to you," he walked in front of Dameon, blocking his path to the front door.

"[censored] off sheriff. Look at me; I'm a little worse for ware. . I need to lie down," Dameon pushed his way past Lucas and reached for his door knob.

The door was unlocked; Dameon shoved it open and looked inside wide-eyed.

"What the [censored]?" Dameon stood stunned in the threshold of his house.

A dozen eyes peered back at him.

Everything in his house, everything that had taken him a lifetime to amass was gone. The walls were bare, the furniture was gone, and the floors were stripped. The prewar cargo, the robotic butler, the work bench, the jukebox, the posters, the refrigerator, the books, the wall art, the hundreds of painstakingly gathered knick-knacks; everything that he had so meticulously collected and cared for had vanished. It had been replaced by a dozen gaunt, malnourished children and six desperate looking wastelanders.

As Dameon tried to take it all in, Lucas Simms intruded on his thoughts, "you've been gone for three months, we all thought you were-"

"GET THE [censored] OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET OUT! GET OUT!" Dameon screamed. He threw the crate of water bottles down and it shattered, the individual bottles scattered across the empty steel floor.

Dameon stormed into his house and menaced the cowering transient families inside. The parents grabbed their children and the entire group of squatters ran out of the back of the shack, away from the screaming, monstrous creature before them.

Dameon's eyes darted wildly around his house for any sign of his possessions but everything; even the light bulbs were gone. The anger inside him grew to a boil; he felt so angry he didn't know whether to tear Lucas to pieces with his bare hands or break down and cry on his doorstep.

"Just calm down," Lucas was standing in the doorway with his son looming behind him as backup.

"Where are all my things, where is my whole [censored] life you thieves!"

"I told you, we all thought you were dead, months and no word. The Brotherhood convinced us you died in the explosion at the memorial."

"What. . .you greedy [censored]!" Dameon paced about his empty home, his mind was racing with thoughts of powerlessness and violence.

"You had no family and no friends. There was no one to give your cargo to. What did you want us to do, seal this house up like a tomb and wait for years just in case you came back?"

"It's only been three months!"

"Well in case you haven't noticed, we're tight on space. I was able to house four families in this place. They had been sleeping in the mud out on the street."

Dameon laughed to himself, "full voting resident, what a [censored] joke!" he took the rifle off his back and checked to make sure it was loaded.

Lucas Simms backed up and put his finger on his gun's trigger. He tried to stare down Dameon but was too bothered by his revolting appearance to be able to give him an intimidating glare.

"What did you do with my things!" Dameon hissed.

"I auctioned off what was in here to pay for more mercs and to re-fortify the walls. The Talon Company has been taking over the weaker settlements. I did it for the good of the town."

"You auctioned-" Dameon paused and glanced upstairs. He bit his lip so hard that if it wasn't petrified it would have bled, "to who?"

"The residents. Now just calm-"

Dameon nodded madly like a crazed man, "yeah, yeah, I know [censored] who!" he kicked open the back door to his house and began to trudge up the steel bridge to CraterSide Supply.

The mobs on MegaTon's gangways practically jumped out of Dameon's path as he made his way up to the familiar wasteland shop. Lucas and Harden followed on his heels like lapdogs, waving for the mercs to follow them.

Dameon walked up to the imposing fa?ade of CraterSide Supply, the second largest structure in Megaton; a magnet to travelers, merchants, and caravaners throughout the desert. As he reached the front door a begging woman grabbed her filthy child and yanked her away from Dameon, terrified of the abomination before her.

Dameon practically kicked in the steel front door.

"Moira!"

Moira looked up from her terminal. Her face turned white as if she had seen a ghost. She dropped a pencil she had been twirling in her fingers as she stammered, trying to form a complete thought.

The bullet strapped merc opposite her sheepishly tried to blend in with the wall behind him.

"Who are-" Moira squeaked.

"It's me, Dameon. Remember me?" Dameon fumed. He was still in a rage.

Lucas and Harden took a few steps inside the shop behind Dameon, keeping a nervous, watchful eye on him.

"Dameon. . .," Moira tried to smile but she was too horrified of his repulsive face. She fidgeted with her pony tail and bent over to fetch her pencil.

Dameon had begun to look around the packed shop with greedy eyes, "that's mine," he pointed to a pair of posters on the wall, "and the work bench. . . the jukebox over there. Those books. The toaster," he snatched a hula dancer dashboard icon off of Moira's desk and waived it at her like a knife; "this is mine!"

"So, so sorry Dameon. We all thought-" Moira's voice trailed off, she fiddled with the collar of her powder blue jumpsuit.

Dameon snatched everything he recognized off the floor and walls and crammed it into a small backpack. There were way too many items to fit inside of it and he had no hope of carrying back the larger things like the work bench or the jukebox. He shoved what possessions he could into his bag.

"What happened to you?" Moira shuffled the things on her desk. She had retrieved her pencil and put it to paper as if she was going to write down his response to add to her volumes of copious, quasi scientific notes.

"What happened to me?" Dameon grabbed the pencil from her hand and threw it into his bag, "I got a six kiloton facial."

Moira slowly nodded while watching Dameon scan her inventory.

He stood up and leaned over the counter right into Moira's face.

"Dameon-" Lucas began to raise his weapon.

"Where are the rest of my things? The liquor, my china, my clothes, my sheets. . ."

"I. . .I. . .I sold a lot of it," Moira stared down at the floor.

"That's not [censored] good enough."

"Moriarty might have-"

"Moriarty!" the very thought was enough to send Dameon into a frenzy.

Lucas gingerly put a hand on Dameon's shoulder. Dameon recoiled as if it were made of ice.

"Do that again and I will put you through the wall," Dameon glared at the sheriff with his icy blue eyes. The bacteria that infested his body had warped every part of his appearance except for his eyes. They remained a dark midnight blue.

Dameon looked up at the ceiling. He could see more of his possessions were stacked in boxes upstairs. His former property was a third of CraterSide's current inventory. It would take him days to be able to move everything back.

"Pack up what's mine, I will be back for my things," Dameon seethed to Moira.

He turned around and kicked the door to the outside back open.

Chapter 21: Moriarty's Saloon

"Ah, Dameon," Moriarty tried to disarm him with a broad smile. He hadn't expected Dameon's horrendous appearance, but tried not to show his surprise.

Dameon loomed in the doorway of the old saloon. The saloon patrons turned around in their rickety barstools and looked up in silence from their tables. There were a few gasps from the customers.

A tired and worn out Nova stopped wiping down the front bar and took a few nervous steps back toward Moriarty's office.

Three Dog barked on the radio in the background.

"My things?"

Moriarty nodded, "we'll be okay here," he motioned his arms for Lucas and Harden to leave. There were plenty of other mercs and bouncers positioned around the saloon. They fearfully eyed Dameon from their stools and positions along the walls, while reaching for their rusty automatic weapons.

"We all thought you were dead Dameon. But don't worry, I'm no thief. Go ahead and take back what's yours. Though I paid dearly for it, I won't charge you a cap."

Dameon stormed over to the bar and began to shove some of the items he recognized as his own into his pockets. A small snifter, some nice cutlery. He noticed a painting of the ocean he had scavenged was hanging on the bar wall. He tore it down and looked around for anything else he could claim.

Dameon realized he was exhausted. The rage was slowly cooling off inside of him. As he looked around, he noticed everyone in the bar was still staring at him, not talking, or even daring to sip on their drinks. He felt a strange pain in his heart and realized it was coming from their frightened, disgusted stares.

Instead of rage, he felt embarrassed by the way he was acting. He felt like a callous raider or looter, grabbing everything from the saloon he could carry while the crowd watched on helplessly like he was defiling their home. He glanced at his backpack; it was bursting at the seams with cargo. The people around him and on the streets had nothing.

Moriarty walked over to one of his burly mercs and whispered for him to relax a little. He then walked back over behind the bar and eased Nova away with gentle hands.

"How about I fix you a drink, Dameon. Consider it an. . .apology and a homecoming gift of sorts."

"A drink? I'd rather choke on sand than swill down that piss water you peddle."

"Well, perhaps you'd like some of your own piss water back then?" Moriarty let out a brief laugh.

Dameon cocked his head, "what. . .you, you have my top shelf liquor?"

"Of course. It's back in my office. Right this way."

(**************************************************************************)

"Ah see, here it is. Didn't sell a drop of it. No one else in MegaTon has the taste to appreciate your grand collection," Moriarty opened up a locked cabinet above his desk terminal. Inside were two neat rows of colorful liquor bottles, "had to hide these from everyone in the bar. . .even Nova. Wouldn't want an old [censored] getting her lips around something so. . .refined," he chuckled.

"Did you get your lips around it, then?" Dameon glanced up at the shelf. His legs felt weak. He sat down at a small side table in the office and glanced out the back window at the afternoon sun setting below the high walls of MegaTon.

"Only a bit. . .you look a little a weary, and I'm sure you can't carry this all back with you now. Why don't you come back for your things, and in the meantime you and I can have a drink?

"A drink?"

"Yeah. You couldn't find better company . . .and a lot has happened while you were away. Information has been my most lucrative businesses, and right now I'm not charging. . .so what's your poison?"

Dameon coughed into his hard hands, "the single barrel scotch."

"Ah," Moriarty plucked the half empty bottle from the cabinet, "Ireland's finest," he popped off the cork stopper and poured the amber liquid into two shallow glasses. He handed one to Dameon and then held out his own for a toast.

Dameon would have thrown it in Moriarty's face a few months ago. He hated the man, but as he thought about it he realized he hated everyone.

Dameon struck his glass against Moriarty's with a loud clank and swallowed the whole glass of scotch in one gulp. He could barely taste it on his sandpaperish tongue. He held out the glass for another round.

Moriarty gave him a bit more alcohol, pulled up a chair, and sat down at the table across from him. He sipped on his drink and lit up a stale, crumbly cigar. "So Dameon, what on earth happened to you?"

"What have you heard?"

"Ha, well the Brotherhood came looking for you a few days after the atomic blast at the memorial. When Lucas and I told them you never came back, they thought you must have died there. Must have gotten pretty close to it, eh?"

Dameon tapped his crusty face, "close enough."

"Yes. . .so where have you been all this time? Been a few months, that's a long time to be gone, even for an old wanderer like you."

"Everywhere," Dameon looked back out of the window, "all the way down to the tip of Maryland and back."

"Long journey. . . out looking for something?"

Dameon paused, "yeah."

"Find it?"

Dameon almost laughed but then he thought about the question and felt defeated, "no. . .I. . .lost it."

"Ah well. Here's to what we've lost," Moriarty held up his glass for another toast.

They toasted. Dameon then retreated into his drink and his own thoughts for a few minutes.

"You know the Brotherhood probably still want to talk to you. They have a few soldiers posted outside of town, a precaution against the Talon Company. Their commander is named Colvin. I could try and. . . .misinform them about you coming back if you want to stay off their radar. Consider it a favor between old friends."

"If they want me they can come get me."

"Fine. . ." Moriarty ashed his cigar.

"This bloom is the real deal?"

"Uh-huh, must have seen it for yourself on the way back here. Very pretty out there now. All kinds of things are growing, nothing edible yet. Maybe in time. But it's been both a blessing and a curse. After the flowers bloomed and the ghouls died, those Talon mercs came out of the woodwork. Used to just be a few scattered bases of them and a handful of patrols."

"I heard they attacked TenPenny."

"TenPenny, eh? News to me. Not shocking though. First GirderShade, then GrayDitch. Pretty soon they'll be at the gates."

Dameon stayed silent in thought.

"I thought between the Enclave, the raiders, and all the mutants we had enough to worry about," Moriarty leaned back in his chair.

"What does the Brotherhood want with me?"

"I got the impression they wanted to know what happened at the Anchorage Memorial."

"What do you know about that?"

"Not as much as you I'd guess. . .nothing but gossip really. The ghouls who used to talk to Cromwell and those Church of Atom idiots said you found some kind of cursed artifact hidden in the tunnels under the Memorial and gave it to the Brotherhood. They blamed you and the Brotherhood for the plague. . .until it wiped them all out. I found it a bit hard to believe, ancient curses and all. But something strange must have happened up there, right afterwards was the bloom."

Dameon nodded.

"So what are you going to do now? You back home for good, you going to keep on roaming the wastes, or are you just here looking for something?" Moriarty leaned forward.

"Home?" Dameon mulled over the concept for a moment. He then stood up from his seat and went to leave.

"That's it? You're not going to tell me anything else?" Moriarty sounded irritated.

Dameon walked out without a word.

Chapter 22: The Prophet

Dameon was dead tired as he rounded the corner of Moriarty's office and walked through the now half empty bar. He glanced at Nova on his way out. In the past he had used her 'services' many times. Deep down he still had a bit of fondness for her. He liked her prickly attitude; it was a nice touch on such a down-on-her-luck woman. He wouldn't dare to approach a woman now; they gagged at the sight of him.

Dameon paused and watched as she ragged down the bar, and then glanced at a new young blond who had taken Nova's old place by the staircase that led up to the saloon's brothel. He felt a pang of nostalgia.

Dameon smiled, "where's Gob?"

"Gob's dead," Nova muttered, not looking up.

Dameon shook his head. It was a stupid question; the feeling of being back in his old watering hole had gotten him to the point where he hadn't even connected the dots. He could see the pain in Nova's eyes as she looked away from him and continued her work.

"All the ghouls are dead except for you," she added while walking over to the rusted fridge behind the bar.

As Dameon walked out the door and braced himself for the cacophony outside, he pictured Gob in his mind and then all the other ghouls he'd come in contact with through his years in the D.C. desert. Carol's crumpled smile, Ahzrukhal's evil laugh, Tulip's bashful gaze. He shuttered at the thought of all of their withered faces and pictured them lying dead in heaps like piled trash down in the Underworld.

All gone now. . .

"The Great Prophet of Atom has returned!"

Dameon was startled out of his thoughts by Cromwell's loud proclamation. The old man had begun to pack up for the end of the day; he was no longer standing in his usual spot in the water pooled around MegaTon's live warhead. Instead, he had been chatting with some of his disciples under the front awning of the Brass Lantern, enjoying an early squirrel dinner. His face beamed as he watched Dameon walk down the gangway from Moriarty's Saloon back to his empty home.

"The Prophet has returned!" Cromwell repeated even more excitedly. He shuffled over to Dameon and a few of his followers from the Church of Atom gently tapped and tugged on Dameon's cloak before they kissed their own fingertips as if they had touched a sacrament.

"Get back from me, you crazies," Dameon shoved one of the disciples to the ground and continued to walk back towards his house.

Cromwell followed on Dameon's heels, "all hail the glorious Prophet of Atom, he who allowed Atom's radiance to shine in all of His glory. He who has sanctified the sands of the desert with a kiss from Atom's hallowed lips."

Dameon paused and swung around coming face to face with Cromwell, "what did you say?"

"You are the long heralded Prophet of Atom. He who paves the way for His great return. Please bless our town and my humble flock; he who has come face to face with the great, unfathomable One."

"You want to come face to face with Atom? Try blowing that bomb you babble in front of all day, you stupid fanatic," Dameon turned around and ignored the old man, walking up the ramp to his house's front door.

"Great Prophet, where is the Child? The Child of Atom? She who must anoint the desert with the waters of life."

Dameon winced; he walked over to his front door, and went to open it. The four squatter families he had displaced were sitting near his doorstep, huddled together in the mud.

The eyes of the cold and hungry children glared up at Dameon as he entered. They cursed him under their breath.

Dameon nearly collapsed as he reentered his home. Moira had already had her mercs bring over a few of his possessions. They had piled most of them onto the floor, except the large jukebox which was sitting upstairs across from his old bedroom.

Dameon ignored the clutter. He lay down on a dirty mattress and closed his eyes. He shifted on the cushioning and tried to clear his mind. Any time he was able to make his mind go blank for a few fleeing moments the thoughts would return. He'd feel ugly, hateful, and alone.

All alone.

In his mind's eye he pictured Chloe in the rows of tall trees in the Solarium. She was smiling to him. . .

Wait. . . not smiling. . .

Dameon gritted his teeth. He got up from his bed and turned the jukebox to an empty, staticy radio station hoping the white noise would drown out his thoughts. He then lay back down and drifted off to sleep to the hustle and bustle of MegaTon.

Dameon woke up early the next morning to the soothing sound of a woman's deep voice crackling over the old jukebox.

"Good morning to you, wastelanders, desert dwellers, and everyone and everything in between.
This is DJ Cosmic Kate.
Coming at you from so far up on high,
Honey, I'm that shooting star in the sky,
Mmmmmmm, easier on the ears,
Then some other wasteland DJs,
But before a fresh tune,
I'll pause to note some changes in America,
The desert bloom.
Have you seen,
The vibrant collage of the desert,
The flowery meadows,
The prewar dream?
Well open up your window and take a peek,
Cause times are a changing,
And life ain't so bleak. . .
Soon a chicken in every pot,
And a cop on every corner,
Before our tired eyes a new wasteland unfurled,
By tomorrow we'll all be living,
In a brave new world.

Haha. . .but now baby. . .how about I indulge you with a little of the old master himself. Mr. blue eyes . . .Frankie Sinatra,"

The way you wear your hat

Dameon stood up and smacked the jukebox off.

A/N: You may have noticed that I'm trying to begin a RP - True to Caesar. If you're a fan of this story, don't worry - its already written - I'm posting it as I edit it, so its not on hiatus or anything.

Chapter 23: Brotherhood Caravan

Lucas Simms pulled his brown beaded cowboy hat off of his sweaty head and squinted into the sunlight, staring southwest of MegaTon. He had made a daily routine of waking up early to visit Stockholm at his post, high above MegaTon's front gate, so he could survey the wasteland and the transients camped out in front of his town for any sign of danger.

Today, he was more edgy than usual. As he looked out over MegaTon, past the deep bomb crater, and above the rusting tin roof of Moriarty's Saloon, he could just make out a narrow column of smoke billowing on the horizon. Through the morning haze, he could tell it was rising from the outline of TenPenny Tower, which was little more than a reddish shadow far off in the distant sands.

Simms furrowed his brow and spit over the wall in front of him. He watched the spittle fall for a second or two before it crashed into the dust. He then wiped his dry lips and began to descend from the overlook, walking down the stairs to ground level.

As he went to walk over to his house to wake his son, he ran into Dameon, who was making his way towards the front gate.

"Dameon," Simms rubbed some dust off his stubbly cheek and made an annoyed smile, "heading out already?"

Dameon didn't respond. He looked up at the sky for a moment. He was wearing his black cloak. The thin fabric of his now inactive sneak suit was draqed over it. He had two rifles slung over his back along with a travel sac that hung down near his side. A bottle of water sloshed around on his waist.

"I'll keep an eye on your things while you're gone," Simms nodded to himself while attempting to walk past him.

"Don't bother," Dameon's voice was grave. He dug down into his side pocket and handed Simms an old, crumpled piece of brown paper.

"What's this?" Simms began to try and unwrinkle the wad of paper while glancing up at Dameon.

"The deed to my house," Dameon whispered.

"Huh?" Simms stopped what he was doing and looked up, "why are you giving it to me?"

"Do with my house what you will," Dameon shrugged and then walked away, "I'm leaving," he flexed his shoulders to pull the weapons and cargo draqed around them closer into his body before staring up at Stockholm to signal him to open the gate.

"What?" Simms' face went blank. He took a few quick steps to catch up to Dameon, "you already made me kick everyone out of there. . your cargo. . .your. . .why?"

As the gate began to creak open Dameon glanced back, "there's nothing left for me here. . .anymore. . .just a memory."

(***********************************************************************)

"Keep moving wastelander."

The Brotherhood sentry tried to shoo away a dirty teenage girl who had stopped to loiter around the edge of the Brotherhood encampment. The sentry was hot and uncomfortable in his heavy plated power armor. He pulled off his helmet, revealing a beet red face. Steam seemed to rise up from inside of his armor and swirl around his scalp.

Eleven Brotherhood soldiers had set up a row of tents at the edge of the shanty town in front of MegaTon. They had been posted there months ago to protect and keep track of the water caravans that Rivet City ran from the Jefferson Purifier down to MegaTon and the other settlements that dotted the wastes. Recently, they had also begun to monitor the escalating attacks by the Talon Company.

The amount of desperate people that wandered within inches of the tents was unnerving to the Brotherhood soldiers. They constantly had to chase away transients and thieves before they could pilfer their ammo, weapons, or foodstocks. The soldiers were morally weary of being surrounded by so many desperate beggars; people were starving to death within feet of them as they ate breakfast at their mess table.

Kiera had settled in with the Brotherhood as she prepared, along with the rest of the soldiers, to make the long trek back into the DC area to resupply. She was busy picking the scant meat off of an old iguana leg, sitting next to a long plastic folding table a few feet in front of the green command tent. It was an extremely hot day; her long black hair was matted to her cheeks and neck. As she sweated from the sweltering heat, she sipped on the last mouthful of water left in one of her water bottles. As she tossed the empty bottle aside into the rocky sand, she saw Dameon walk over to the Brotherhood sentry who was guarding the entrance to the command tent.

The sentry nearly backed up all the way into the tent as he saw Dameon approach.

"Who. . .what are you? Some kind of ghoul?"

Dameon was stone, "I'm here to see Commander Colvin."

The sentry was silent for a second, studying the disfigured, wasting man in front of him, "Is he expecting you? I don't remember him saying-"

"Tell him Dameon Rayes wants to speak with him about the Anchorage Memorial."

The sentry cocked his head to the side and then nodded before disappearing into the command tent.

From her seat a few feet away, Kiera dropped her gristly iguana meat and stood up, "you're. . .you're Dameon Rayes?"

Dameon glanced over to her as the sentry and a Brotherhood knight ducked out from the command tent.

The knight was taller than the sentry and older than an ordinary soldier. His graying hair was neatly parted to the right side. He had serious, deep brown eyes and a long scar on his cheek.

"I said, you're Demon Rayes?" Kiera repeated. Her tone was irate. She walked up closer to Dameon, glaring at him with a look that could have turned him to ice.

"Yeah," Dameon answered, slightly confused. He looked back to the two Brotherhood soldiers that had exited the command tent.

"You [censored] murderer!" Kiera drew a long Bowie knife from her side and charged at Dameon before he could react.

Kiera went to tackle Dameon to the ground. He stood in place and braced his body. He had become so heavy from his chalky, bony, overgrowths that he was an immovable rock; Kiera nearly bounced off of him as he pushed her back with both arms. As he did so, Kiera slashed her knife across his left arm making a long, narrow cut in his cloak and his chalky skin. A small stream of blood began to soak though Dameon's clothing and drip down onto the sand.

As Dameon glanced down at his wound, Kiera went to kick him in the crotch. He was able to block the low blow and went to grab Kiera's knife wielding arm, but she was too fast. She was able to pivot away from him while he was off balance and stab him under his left arm just above the elbow. She then pushed him forward as hard as she could, so she could drive her knife deep into his back, next to his spine.

"Stop her!" the knight waived for a group of soldiers to break up the fight.

A soldier grabbed Kiera from behind and put her in a full nelson, immobilizing her arms, while another knight shoved himself between Dameon and Kiera to separate them.

Kiera cursed at the knights and Dameon, red faced, "[censored] you, you cowardly chicken pieces of [censored]! And you, murderer! I hope you burn in hell!"

The Brotherhood knight began to drag Kiera off, away from the command tent. After he had taken her a few feet back, she jerked out of his grasp and broke free. Instead of renewing her attacks, she shook herself off and spit in Dameon's direction while giving him the finger. She then stormed off until she was lost to the crowds of traders and beggars.

"What the hell was that about?" the older knight walked over to an agitated Dameon.

Dameon examined the cut to his arm and the wound in his side. Neither were particularly deep, "Don't know."

"Well, you're certainly a popular man. . . Demon Rayes?"

"Dameon."

The knight nodded, "I'm Commander Colvin," he pointed towards the green command tent, "come inside."

Dameon ducked into the tent after Colvin. It was smaller and more Spartan on the inside then Dameon would have guessed. Inside were two rows of cots and footlockers. A few spare rifles and boxes of stale prewar cereal were scattered around the sandy floor. Near the center of the tent was a small card table with an old computer monitor that hummed in the omnipresent heat.

"Command originally sent us here to speak with you. But that was several months ago, where have you been all this time?" Colvin leaned against the computer table.

"Around," Dameon sniffed.

"I see," Colvin paused, unamused, "well you came to see me. So just tell me what you know about what happened at the Memorial."

"I want to talk to the generals in the Citadel. I'll tell them what you want to know."

"About the Memorial?" Colvin squinted.

"About the Memorial and the rise of the Talon Company."

Colvin looked at him for a second, confused, "you're saying they're related? Well you can tell me, I'll report everything to them once I return. Those were my original orders. Sit down over there and I'll debrief you," Colvin went to slide over a chair.

"No," Dameon coughed into his hard hand. A trickle of blood seeped down his arm, "I'm only going to tell them."

"Why?" Colvin bent over and leaned under the desk. He began to fiddle with a small safe lying in the sand under it, "what do you want, caps? I can pay you right here-"

"I don't want caps. I want to talk to the Brotherhood generals. . .I need to ask them something."

Colvin licked his lips, studying Dameon, "Normally I'd tell you to [censored] off, we don't deal this way with outsiders. . .however, the old man was pretty interested in what you had to say. . . at least back when we were deployed," Colvin trailed off and looked up to the pointed ceiling in thought; "the Rivet City mercs and my soldiers are heading out tonight. We're going back to the Citadel en route to Rivet City. . .you have my permission to come along in our caravan. I will escort you to the Citadel and once we're there, they'll decide whether or not they'd like to speak with you. Got it?"

Dameon nodded.

"In the meantime you can help yourself to some of our rations and supplies outside. Be ready to leave by eighteen hundred," he waived Dameon off.

(***********************************************************************)

Dameon's stomach gurgled as he scanned the mess table looking for something to eat. The table was full of food; a few tins of Spam, three skewered iguanas, a wok of squirrel stew, and a large bowl of noodles. All of the seats at the table were taken, save the one next to two raggedy looking Rivet City guards where Kiera had been eating before she stormed off.

As Dameon sat down in the empty seat, the guards next to him shot up to their feet, disgusted, and soon walked away. The Brotherhood soldiers opposite Dameon and farther down the table likewise leaned back in their seats with looks of revulsion. A few of them got up to leave the moment he sat down.

Dameon tried to ignore them; he reached over the table to a giant, metallic bowl of noodles and went to scoop some of them into his cup. As he went to grasp the ladle, a knight pulled the bowl away from him, over to herself.

"I was going to eat that," Dameon grumbled.

"It's our food," one of the other knights muttered.

"I was offered it."

"Just let me get some of it first, before you. . .touch it," the female knight seemed to shudder at the thought. She spooned a few helpings of noodles into her bowl and then pushed the bowl back in Dameon's direction.

Dameon sneered as he watched her slide the bowl over to him like he was a leper. After the bowl came to a rest in front of him, Dameon began to exaggeratedly cough and hack into his hands, making loud retching noises while wiping his face with his sleeves.

"Euck. . .God," all of the other knights stood up from the table and walked away in disgust.

Dameon stopped coughing once they left. He looked around, and realizing that he was now alone, he smiled and piled a mound of food onto his plate.

Chapter 24: Dukov's Place

Dameon paused to sit down on a small rock pile so he could empty the gravel out of his boot that had been plaguing him since early morning. He slipped off his old boot, turned it upside down, and watched as the gravel poured out of it like rain. As he watched the gravel stream slow to a trickle, he looked up and studied the decaying D.C. skyline.

The journey through the desert thus far had been relatively easy, there had been no attacks by raiders, no marauding animals, and the weather had been refreshing as a cloud bank had moved in and obscured the stifling morning sun. The sixteen man strong caravan had glided across the desert with their four pack Brahmin, never straying from the main trade routes. Thus far they hadn't had to fire a shot and they had been making good time towards the Citadel.

Kiera had joined the caravan just before they left MegaTon. She hadn't made eye contact with Dameon since their prior fight, instead she had briefly pvssyd a few times with other Rivet City guards before taking a position at point, at the head of the caravan.

Dameon still had no idea why Kiera had such a grudge against him. He actually found her likeable, unlike most of the other people he had come across in the wastes. She, like him, seemed to be something of loner, and her attitude was tough as nails. She was attractive too, although Dameon knew that feeling would never again be mutual.

As Dameon went to put his boot back on, Kiera glanced back in his direction. He looked to see if she was looking at him, but she immediately averted her gaze and turned around to continue walking forward.

Dameon had lingered in the rear of caravan near the pack Brahmin for the entire journey, away from Kiera, and far back from the Brotherhood soldiers who seemed to be sickened by the sight of him. The only soldiers near him were Colvin, who was not a very good conversationalist, and a Brotherhood medic who was reluctant to accept an outsider alongside him.

As Dameon stood back up, he caught a strong whiff of Brahmin from the four beasts just ahead of him. They smelled musky and rank, their saliva hung down in long streams of drool from their ceaselessly bobbing heads. Dameon had grown to hate being around the four animals because of their smell and stubbornness. He thought about how delicious they would be grilled with MutFruit.

As Dameon took his place back in the rear of the caravan, one of the Brotherhood soldiers out in point put up his hand in a motion for the others to stop. As they did, Dameon began to walk closer to the front; he was tired of smelling the obnoxious pack animals and wanted to get a better handle on what had brought them to a halt. He ducked down and slowly made his way forward to the mass of soldiers who were huddled together.

"Well?" Colvin whispered up to the point man.

One of the knights in point crept over to him, "I heard something up there. Thought I saw some shadows."

Colvin nodded. He motioned for the caravan to remain still.

Dameon was squatting on the ground, waiting for Brotherhood's next move. In front of the caravan was a curvy stretch of asphalt road, flanked by tall buildings on the right and left sides.

Dameon flexed the muscles in his feet to try and dull the tension, before turning back to the pack animals behind him. They seemed skittish as they hoofed the asphalt and snorted the afternoon air.

Dameon scanned the buildings around him. It wasn't unusual to hear strange noises in the D.C. ruins. Besides the howls of raiders and mutants, the buildings themselves actually made a great deal of noise. Since they hadn't been maintained over the centuries since the war, their decaying frames would often groan loudly as they swayed on rusting skeletons. As the metro tunnels below collapsed from disrepair the ground would shift, sending entire skyscraqers crashing down to the ground in pulverizing waves of debris and dust.

The buildings around Dameon at this moment were rather nondescript. As Dameon tried to pick out a familiar landmark, he noticed that behind him, off to the left of the Brahmin, was a large white, fortified structure that he recognized as Dukov's place. The lecherous old man had lived there up until a few years ago. Dameon had visited him once while he scavenging the D.C. ruins to attempt to trade, but the man was uninterested in anything but insulting him and poon.

"Down!"

Dameon couldn't tell which of the knights had given the order, but all of them ducked for cover. Dameon broke away from the pack and hid behind a column near the portico of an old department store. Kiera was a dozen or so feet ahead of him, ducking behind a fallen column next to a burly knight with a chain gun. Several of the other knights took cover behind a rusted out car on the other side of the street. Colvin remained towards the rear, while the knights and Rivet City men on point poked out above the staircases of two half collapsed brownstones.

After the initial shuffle of them scattering subsided, all of the soldiers remained silent, listening for any foreign sound.

All of a sudden, a large mutant darted out of the shell of the crumbling department store, twenty yards in front of Dameon, and mere feet from Kiera. It ran hunched over across the street to the left side, right in front of the point soldiers, before disappearing into the maze of buildings.

The knight in point, across the street from Kiera and Dameon, raised his laser rifle to fire at the hideous creature, but Colvin waived him down from the rear.

As the solider lowered his weapon and watched the creature disappear, another mutant began to run across the street, slightly farther up the road, exiting the same structure as the first, followed by a centaur, and then by another wounded mutant that was desperately trying to run on a crippled leg.

Dameon pulled an assault rifle from his back and took aim at the crippled mutant. As it came into focus, a shot rang out. A bullet dug into the mutant's skull, brining it to the ground before it was able to cross to the street.

The knights all looked right instantly. The shot had come from the department store the mutants were fleeing. As the soldiers turned their attention to that structure, a man wearing sky blue armor hopped down from one of the building's second story windows, deftly slid down a rubble pile, and swept the direction the mutants had fled from with a long rifle, all without making a sound.

Dameon's crosshairs zeroed in on the man.

A [censored] Praetorian?

One of the Brotherhood knights on the left side of the road took a pot shot at the Praetorian from behind a granite staircase. The shot missed, and the Praetorian spun around, scanning the Brotherhood soldiers for a second before doing a quick roll into cover behind a metro sign.

"RAPTORS!" one of the knights screamed.

Dameon saw a pair of arms swing out from behind the farthest column of the department store's portico, a bit aways from Kiera's post. They moved in a flailing motion like they were heaving softballs. As the shapes disappeared back behind the corner, he could hear a series of dull thuds on the concrete.

GRENADES!

A series of grenades detonated next to each of the Brotherhood emplacements as if the Praetorians knew exactly where each one of them was hidden. After the deafening explosions died down, a fog of dust began to settle over the street. Several Praetorians began to shoot at the knights from farther up the road, though the fog; they were only visible from the brief flashes of light from their muzzle blasts. Their fire was deadly accurate, cutting down the two well entrenched Rivet City Guards before the knights could collect themselves enough to return fire.

The knight next to Kiera started up his chain gun and sent a wave of lead into the building the Praetorians on the right were using as cover. Kiera fired her plasma pistol at the Praetorian behind the metro sign.

Gun fire crackled up and down the street as seven more sky blue armored Praetorians slid down from an embankment next to the department store and began to train their rifles on the dug-in knights.

As Kiera ducked from another wave of grenades, Dameon watched as the first Praetorian broke from his cover and stormed the knights out in point on the other side of the street. The Praetorian slammed his rifle down on the shoulder of one of the kneeling knights with one hand and drove a knife in-between the joints of the knight's armor with the other. A knight next to him tried to grab the Praetorian's weapon, but the Praetorian was inhumanly strong, and snapped the knight's armored arm in one twist.

Dameon went to shoot the Praetorian in the back, but heard the thud of a grenade land within a few feet of him. He instantly darted right, into the old department store the Praetorians had emerged from, and took cover.

After the grenade went off, Dameon went back to the entrance to scan the portico. He looked out and watched as a Praetorian with a combat shotgun fired again and again in Colvin's direction, from a second story window, forcing the commander to marine crawl down into a gutter.

As Dameon peered at the scene, a bullet whizzed by his head. He ducked and watched as a Praetorian sniper hit the knight with the chain gun smack between his eyes. The impact sprayed Kiera with blood and the heavy knight collapsed onto her. Another knight with an RPG went to help her up when a shot cut his leg off at the knee.

Flif. Fhew.

Two more bullets impacted the wall next to Dameon, and he backed up further into the department store.

The interior of the department store was eerie and groaning. Moldy clothes were draqed over sagging, rusted clothing racks in a maze of old metal and broken mirrors. Daylight poured in from the front wall of the store, where the old windows had tumbled down into a sea of shattered glass. Bits of concrete and insulation rained down intermittently from the crumbling ceiling onto a semi circle of old jewelry display cases that Dameon had decided to use for cover. At the rear of the department store was a large v shaped staircase with marble banisters.

Dameon swung around wildly from his well covered position behind the jewelry cases. He could hear the shouts of the knights outside as they traded fire with the Praetorians.

Dameon put his rifle down on the top of the empty display case and trained the scope outside, looking for a good shot. He could see veiled movement a bit above his line of sight, so he stood up and tried to get a better vantage. As he did so, he heard footsteps behind him.

Dameon turned around; a Praetorian was walking down the stairs from the second level, coming right at him at a slow pace. Dameon was about to raise his rifle and brace himself to be shot when something about the Praetorian's demeanor made him pause.

Although the Praetorian was staring at him intently with his soulless eyes, his posture wasn't threatening. His rifle was only half raised.

The Praetorian slowly walked forward towards Dameon, stepping off the last step of the staircase and doing a quick sweep of the interior of the store before continuing towards the gunfire crackling outside.

He walked up to within three feet of Dameon and paused.

Dameon cocked his head at the Praetorian and stood in silence. It scanned him with its dark doll eyes.

"Whoo-ooop," the Praetorian shot his head up for a second like he had hiccupped. His eyes locked on Dameon, as Dameon stood unnerved. The Praetorian then seemed to completely disregard him like he was a house plant as it stepped forward towards the entrance door.

While staring at the Praetorian, Dameon saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Kiera was retreating into the entrance of the department store from the outside, to the right of him, directly where the Praetorian was advancing. She was covering her retreat with a volley from her pistol; her back to Dameon and the blue armored man.

The Praetorian instantly leveled his rifle at her and went to fire.

"Look out!" Dameon screamed. He began to raise his rifle at the Praetorian but had to fire from the hip.

The burst from Dameon's rifle struck the Praetorian in the back just as the man squeezed his trigger to take a shot at Kiera. His shot went low and hit her just above the knee. She screamed out in pain and fell down , tumbling back outside and out of view. In a fluid motion the Praetorian swung back around to Dameon and fired a round straight into his neck.

The force of the round made Dameon fall to the ground behind the display cases. His hands shot around his neck. He felt warm blood stream out from his gaping wound.

The Praetorian went to run after Kiera. As he got to the entrance door, Kiera ripped an RPG off the back of a fallen knight and fired it over her shoulder at the wall next to the Praetorian.

From his spot on the floor, Dameon heard the rocket explode right next to the Praetorian and blow him to pieces that scattered around the room. At that moment, pain began to shoot throughout Dameon's system paralyzing him and drowning out his thoughts. Blood filled his lungs, and each breath was a struggle, like he was breathing through a straw. He tried to call out for help but he couldn't make any noise. He began to writhe on the dusty floor and kick his feet against the display case to try and get someone's attention. The pool of blood around him grew larger and larger.

As he stared up at the unstable ceiling, the room began to spin.

As Dameon felt his body go numb, he saw Kiera poke her head over the jewelry cases and glance down at him. In his death throws, he locked eyes with her; silently pleading for her to get someone to help him.

Kiera looked at him pitilessly for a moment, still clutching the empty RPG tube while watching him bleed out. Her eyes turned to look outside.

Dameon tried to lift up his arm to show he was still alive but his strength failed him.

Kiera brushed back her hair and dropped the empty tube. It clanked on the floor. She went to leave and then paused.

The gunfire outside began to die down as the Praetorians withdrew to the west.

"[censored]," Kiera muttered to herself. She bit her lip and paused in thought before limping on her wounded leg back over to the front of the department store.

"We need the medic and some stimpaks in here, right now!"

Images swirled through Dameon's mind. He was a kid again, following in his father's footsteps up a switchback mountain trail, tracking the bloody footprints of a wounded Yao Gaui. He was teenager, fondling a sassy Pitt raider through her spiked armor while she ducked out of guard duty under Veteran's Bridge. He was broken, disfigured older man giving Chloe a twisted shoulder to cry on.

As he pictured Chloe's face, he saw the medic peering down at him. He was a young man with blond hair. He disappeared from view as he dug around in a medical bag.

"That's it! Try and hold the wound closed," the medic's tone was frantic.

Dameon began to feel extremely cold. His whole body was numb. As the room began to go darker and darker he turned his head to the side. A large chunk of the dead Praetorian's arm was lying on the floor a few feet away from him. Several wires, transformers, and a smattering of electrical components jutted out from the severed limb. As the last few sparks of electricity crackled in the severed hand and arm, the fingers twitched like a dead insect.

The room went pitch black as Dameon lost consciousness.

Chapter 25: The Citadel

"Why?" The dying Outcast soldier's lips barely moved as he tried to from the word. It came out as no more than a whisper. A tiny trickle of blood seeped out from the Outcast's mouth and he slumped over between the wall and the floor.

Dameon leaned back, repulsed. He had just taken off the Outcast's helmet, assuming the man was dead. As he drove his knife into the Outcast's side to unfasten his armor, the man had come back to life for one brief moment.

The Outcast locked eyes with Dameon for the last time; Dameon could see the shadow of death rising from within his pupils and he could hear the man's labored last breaths. The sight and sound made Dameon feel cold and hollow. He was about to look away when the Outcast's face began to melt off his skull.

Before Dameon's eyes the Outcast's skin bubbled and boiled as if it were being cooked by radiation. The skin began to lump and congeal around the Outcast's chin and cheeks until he looked like a ghoul with pale droopy skin and bleached eyes.

As Dameon recoiled from the changed man he realized he recognized the ugly, gnarled face.

It was Gob.

"What can I get you?" Gob leaned forward on the floor in the bloody power armor like he was still working the bar back at Moriarty's.

What was left of Gob's mouth pulled itself into a smile, before his whole body crumbled to dust.

(**************************************************************************)

"Hey sleeping beauty, you finally awake?" the bulky Brotherhood soldier jostled Dameon out of his stupor by poking him in the ribs.

"Ahrumph," Dameon muttered an unintelligible stream of consonants. His tongue felt numb and floppy and he had horrible cotton mouth.

"Commander, he's up now. Can I let go of him. . .tired of dragging this sack of Brahmin [censored] around," the knight heaved Dameon upwards so that both of Dameon's feet were flat on the ground. He had held Dameon up for the past several hours, allowing him use his armored body as a crutch, as Dameon had awkwardly plodded along in a semi conscious state.

The sun was now low in the sky and was starting to set, sending a few brilliant rays of orange light over the D.C. high rises that lay behind the caravan.

"Hold it," Colvin glanced back to the knight and Dameon. He left his more forward position and motioned for the knight to ease Dameon down to the ground to let him stand on his own power.

The knight let go of Dameon and Dameon leaned down in a squat before rising on wobbly knees. He ran his fingers over the bullet wound on his neck. The hard flesh had been forced shut with a row of tiny, steel surgical staples. As Dameon felt them with his finger tips he blinked his eyes over and over again in an attempt to clear his blurry vision. Colvin appeared as nothing more than a large grayish smudge ahead of him.

"Wha-" Dameon began to cough uncontrollably for a few moments. Trying to talk made his throat feel raw. He could taste a few drops of blood that lingered on the back of his tongue.

"You were pretty damn lucky, it missed your voice box by less than an inch," Colvin loomed closer to Dameon and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Am I done then? I want to spray some disinfectant on my armor, I think he left some of his skin behind," the burly knight rolled his sore shoulder and wiped off the side of his armor that Dameon had leaned against with an old, soiled rag.

"Yeah Finley, go back and take your post," Colvin ignored the grumpy knight and peered into Dameon's foggy eyes, "you've been out for a few hours. The medic pumped you full of jet, med-x, and buffout; it kept you awake enough for you to keep moving. We're almost at the Citadel now."

Dameon coughed again, spitting out a wad of black, congealed blood that tasted sweet and metallic on his tingling tongue. His eyes burned as he scanned the caravan up and down while Colvin followed his gaze.

"Your friend left us after we got to L'Enfant Plaza."

"Mmm. . .my friend?" Dameon's voice was hoarse and scratchy.

"The River City girl, Kiera. She was going back to the Purifier. . ."

"What happened?" Dameon's vision finally came back into focus and he realized the caravan had already reached the tall, concrete E ring wall of the Pentagon. He could hear the shots of knights doing target practice crackling inside, and he could see a small formation of Brotherhood soldiers had clumped together at the end of the street, by the massive entrance door.

"Don't you remember? One of those Raptors got you right in the neck."

"What the [censored] is a Raptor?" Dameon leaned over to stretch his back; it felt raw from being held in a contorted position for hours on end. He then shook his head still feeling felt light headed from blood loss and groggy from the meds.

"Those machines, they look like humans. . .whatever they are. The thing that shot you."

"The Praetorian?"

Colvin gave Dameon a blank stare.

"How did we get away from them?"

"They're very particular. . .I think they have preset targets. They always attack the Brotherhood on sight, but they were after something else. They engaged us for a few minutes and then broke off, going west."

"Commander!" the medic called over to Colvin. He was about a hundred yards south of Colvin and Dameon, waiting with the group of knights by the entrance door to the Citadel, gesturing to an intercom, "we need you."

"Collect yourself and I'll see if they still want to see you," Colvin trailed off and walked towards the front entrance.

Dameon stood where he was for a few minutes, trying to deal with the nausea that came as the buffout wore off. He felt his wound again before walking up to where the soldiers had gathered.

A large, menacing Sentry bot was standing to the right of the closed Citadel entrance, scanning all of the knights that came within range. As Dameon approached, it backed up on its tripod legs and lowered its weaponized arms at his chest, ready to riddle him with bullets.

"Halt!" the machine boomed.

Dameon froze in his tracks a few feet away from the mass of Brotherhood soldiers. Horrible thoughts of Turtledove raced through his mind.

Colvin was speaking into the intercom, waiting for a response from the other end. The knights around him looked worn out and tired. A few of them had already begun to anxiously remove their armor, barely able to wait to get into the relative safety inside, where they could finally relax and lower their guard.

Colvin glanced back to Dameon for a moment. He was standing a few feet away, kept at bay by the threatening robot. As Colvin went to say something to override the robot's programming, he heard a loud moan as the front gate of the Citadel was slowly pulled up into the air.

The gate was a riveted sheet of steel that stood eight feet tall and four men wide. It was hoisted up by four sets of thick steel chains. The bottom of the gate was lined with iron spikes that dug into the ground, leaving a row of deep dimples in the gray, rocky soil below.

As the door rose up above the heads of the anxious soldiers, the Sentry bot relaxed its pose and lowered its arms.

"Guess they're still interested," Colvin waived for Dameon to follow the knights. The soldiers nearly skipped inside.

Dameon paused for a second and studied the robot.

"Have a pleasant day," the machine commanded.

(**************************************************************************)

"It's right through here; don't touch anything," Colvin ducked under a large metal beam.

It was part of a latticework of steel beams and cables that kept an enormous human shaped robot upright in the center of the Citadel Science Lab. The robot had a stern expression chiseled into its metallic face. Its eyes were two, foot wide crystals that glowed deep midnight blue. It stood over thirty feet tall on massive tungsten legs. The robot almost had to be bent over in its stance; its head scraqed the lab ceiling.

Now inactive for two decades, the mechanical hulk had dozens of Brotherhood scribes buzzing around it like worker bees, keeping its chassis in a polished shine, while running endless rounds of diagnostic tests to try and pin point why the robot had refused to come back on online for two decades.

One of the preoccupied scribes nearly ran into Dameon as he and Colvin weaved their way between the terminals, crackling wires, and various mechanical parts lying in random piles around the floor.

"Excuse me," the scribe jogged past Dameon, over to an active terminal. After banging on a few computer keys, he looked back at Dameon, doing a double take. Once the image of Dameon's cracking skin and wizened face sunk in, the man darted away and whispered something to one of the other scribes.

As Dameon and Colvin continued to make their way through the scientific labyrinth, a line of scribes began to form behind them, following in their wake. They all pushed against one another, trying to catch a glimpse of the strange, mutated wanderer; the last ghoul in D.C..

"That thing ever going to work again?" Dameon took a final look back at the giant robot before following Colvin into the narrow hall that led to A-Ring.

"Hell if I know. If it does, you can bet we'll wipe out the Talon Company and the Enclave in no time. Anytime I ask, they say it will just be another couple of months," Colvin ducked under the low hanging lip of an open door.

As Colvin pointed Dameon down towards A-Ring, Dameon noticed a familiar figure was walking out of the long corridor they were entering. He wasn't a Brotherhood soldier or scribe, he was a middle aged black man, with thin rimmed glasses, and a gray skull cap. His leather motorcycle jacket was slick and polished. Although his face showed some of the wrinkles of age, he didn't have the dried out, leathery skin most wastelanders developed over years of exposure. It looked like he had had a much safer, more comfortable existence. He had a troubled look about him, and barely peeked up from his dread locks as Dameon and Colvin walked by.

The man was walking with deliberate speed; he glanced up at Dameon and Colvin briefly and then pressed himself up against the wall to let them pass, uninterested in the horrible, mutated man in front of him.

"Three Dog?" Dameon's voice was tinged with surprise. He stopped the dark man with his grainy voice and peered into his face from inches away, "didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"I'd hoped you wouldn't, Dameon. You promised to rip off my nuts and feed them to me if you did," Three Dog furrowed his brow out of irritation, "your idea of a joke I'm guessing?"

Dameon involuntarily smiled; flexing his facial muscles reopened a bit of his neck wound, "that was a long time ago. . .I didn't agree with your portrayal of me on the radio."

Three Dog curtly nodded, "well I think I was pretty accurate. You didn't call yourself the 'Demon' for nothing."

"How'd you know this was me? Still have ears all over the desert?" Dameon dabbed the blood off of his neck and stood still while Colvin paused in the hall, tapping his foot, waiting for Dameon to follow.

"Most of my ears died from plague. I think that's thanks to you. You always were a heartless son of a [censored]," Three Dog trailed off, "but I'm not going to start a fight with a man who can shrug off a nuke," he went to squeak past Dameon who purposely blocked his way

"What are you doing here? Why aren't you back at GNR, barking on the radio?"

Three Dog looked away "the Brotherhood pulled me off the air a day ago."

Dameon's eyes widened, "why, after all you did for them?"

"Maybe they're fans of Cosmic Kate," Three Dog muttered as he eased his way past Dameon and began to walk towards the lab.

Dameon watched him disappear behind a corner before he followed Colvin over to A-Ring.

Chapter 26: The Old Man

Owyn Lyons was not how Dameon would have pictured the man. The Brotherhood warrior who had guided the knights all the way from the wastes of California to the US Capital was a wrinkled old man, confined to a wheelchair for the past five years. A large oxygen tank was strapped to the back of his wheelchair, and the old man wheezed as he struggled to svck in a breath of pure O2 from a plastic mask connected to the tank by a long rubber hose.

The sight of the sickly Brotherhood Elder made Dameon uncomfortable. It was hard to believe the old man was still at the head of all of the Brotherhood operations. While he had given up day to day control due to his deteriorating condition, there was no figure the Brotherhood respected more than Elder Owyn Lyons.

As Dameon paused in the threshold of the bland A-Ring conference room, Owyn wheeled himself away from the crescent shaped conference table, and over to Dameon, so that Dameon would be able to hear his weak voice.

A squat Brotherhood scribe was standing next to Lyons. His red scribe cloak drowned most of his body in layers of heavy crimson fabric. He had an enduring look of annoyance on his face, which couldn't be broken, even by Dameon's twisted face.

"Mr. Rayes," Lyons pulled the breathing mask from his mouth, it slipped off his lips and a bead of spit clung to his wiry beard, "no father should ever have to outlive his child. There is no worse fate for an old man like me, at least none that I can imagine. Perhaps this is why, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, I've clung to the hope that my Sarah is still alive, out there somewhere. The scribes have told me that very little survived the atomic blast at the Anchorage Memorial, too little for them to be sure if all of our soldiers were indeed lost. All this time, I prayed that Sarah was able to escape or had been captured by the Enclave, anything that would allow me to see my daughter one last time. . .and now that I see that you have survived, the hope within me is rekindled. So, please tell me what happened to my only daughter," the old man's beady eyes sparkled with a last ray of hope.

Dameon slowly exhaled, "I. . .I'm sorry for your loss."

Owyn closed his eyes. His expression showed so much pain Dameon felt it in his stomach.

"I found the H2 artifact in the memorial and gave it to Sarah. We were then attacked by an army of ghouls and mutants that were looking for it. After we held them off, the Enclave moved in. They killed everyone who was left. When it was all lost, I blew the nukes to protect the artifact. Sarah didn't make it."

Owyn made a slow, painful nod, "You're sure Sarah did not survive?"

"I saw her die before the blast; there was nothing I could do."

"And the artifact? The bacteria sample?"

Dameon's bit his tongue, "it was. . .released by the blast. It's what did this to me."

Owyn remained silent for a moment, studying Dameon with a profound look of loss. After a while Owyn again closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He was so silent and still that Dameon wondered if he had fallen asleep.

"My pain is dulled slightly by finally knowing her true fate. I hope Sarah died well. I had hoped she would take my place at the head of the Brotherhood, I had all but ceded control to her already, but she insisted on leading from the front. She could never give up being a soldier, and so was her fate. . .if only Arthur had such courage. . .but I guess he was destined to lead our forces since the High Elder's blood runs through his veins."

Dameon waited for Owyn to finish, "I came here to ask something of the Brotherhood. I agreed to find the artifact for your daughter if she agreed to help me save a girl, Chloe. Chloe was with me when I blew the memorial. Only she and I survived. I had been. . .helping her find her sister, Emily," Dameon winced at the half lie, "after the blast we tracked Emily to the Talon Company base in Quantico Virginia. We got in, but Chloe didn't get out. I know the Talon Company is your enemy; I have information about the Eagle Claw base. I need to rescue her; I came here to ask for your help."

Owyn nodded before taking a deep breath from his oxygen mask, he held the air in to allow himself to speak, "the Talon Company. Although they have been here since the Brotherhood arrived, we have never seen them in such numbers. Even the Enclave may not pose so grave a threat. We were aware of the Eagle Claw base in Quantico, one of many bases scattered throughout the wastes. Their intentions are murky, I am sure any information you can provide will be most helpful."

"There is a huge vault under Quantico, I've seen it. It is led by an overseer named Lukasz Drybala. He commands the Talon Company and those machines your men call the Raptors. Chloe is in his vault. That is why I've come here."

The silent scribe stared down at Owyn wide-eyed in disbelief.

"The Raptors and the Talon Company are allied?" Owyn said in no more than a whisper.

"They're both headed by Drybala. The Raptors are his personal guard."

"And you say that Quantico is the Talon Company's main base?" the petulant scribe finally spoke up, to save Owyn the energy of another breath.

"Yes, and it's where Chloe is."

Owyns looked up at the scribe and nodded to Dameon, "this information is invaluable . . .Mr. Rayes, please go with scribe Bixby and tell him all that you know. He knows much more about the Talon Company, vaults, and the Raptors than do I. With your help, perhaps we can devise a way to defeat our enemies. In the meantime, I will speak with General Maxson about Quantico and your request. Perhaps we will be able to recover your friend."

"Thank you," Dameon bowed his head and turned to the scribe.

"Let's go to the archives," the scribe, Bixby, pointed to a small door to the left, "it's right this way."

A/N: Comments are awesome.

Chapter 27: Citadel Archives

The archives were deserted when Bixby and Dameon arrived. All of the lights were turned off and the room was bathed in a dull green hue. As Bixby switched on the ceiling lights, Dameon covered his eyes with his hands. His eyes had become more sensitive to bright light. His eyelids were hardening, making it more difficult for him to blink.

As he squinted into the brightness, Dameon saw that Bixby was standing next to a pile of machine parts.

Dameon walked up next to the scribe and when his eyes fully adjusted, he realized he was staring at the torso of a partially disassembled Raptor. Its armor had been pulled off its body revealing a pulpy mix of rubbery flesh and a plastic and steel skeleton. Its head was a naked steel skull that lay disconnected from its body. Without its skin or cornea overlays, it had ominous cherry-red, glass eyes.

The Raptor looked like it had been hit with heavy weaponry, as everything below its abdomen had been sheered off except for its centipede-like spinal chord made of threaded steel balls.

The Raptor was lying on top of a white gurney in the center of the small archive room. Two more disassembled Raptors, with varying degrees of damage likewise lay on gurneys on either side of it. Behind them was a computer monitor which was projecting an empty green box of light onto the opposite wall.

"Look familiar?" Bixby looked up from the disassembled Raptor.

Dameon stared down into the face of the machine, "yeah, Drybala called them his Praetorian. They guarded his vault. What does the Brotherhood know about them?"

"Not that much at all. These three were destroyed by our grunts when they were out on patrol. I've saved them for study...have you ever heard of an android?"

"Android? A mechanical man?"

"Yes, as you can see these are mechanical men, androids. The Brotherhood has known about androids for many years. They are still manufactured in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth jealously guards their technology and refuses to trade it with us, but we were able to capture and steal a few of their androids for study. The Commonwealth's androids are much more advanced than the Raptors, which leads us to believe that the Raptors were part of an older generation, likely manufactured before the war. The only information we have about them is what we've been able to piece together from these bodies. I can't interface with their system to read their programming, so really I don't know anything about where they were manufactured or what their protocol is. The only identification of any kind on them is this marking on their CPU," Bixby dug around in the Raptor's metallic skull for a moment, before pulling his hand out. He clenched a small micro chip in his palm and dropped it into Dameon's outstretched hand.

Dameon glanced down at the microprocessor. There was writing across the face of the chip.

Toronto 'Raptor' # 617.

Dameon glanced back up to Bixby, "six one seven?"

"Yes, and that is number 619 and there's 720," Bixby pointed to the other piles of circuits and metal, "why our grunts call them Raptors."

Dameon put the microchip down next to the gurney, "and that's all you know about them?"

"I could explain to you some of the technicals of how they operate but I doubt that would interest you, unless you have a thing for advanced robotics."

Dameon cocked his head and stared directly into the Raptor's red eyes, "if they're robots why do they make those weird noises?"

"We call it 'chirping.' I haven't heard it for myself, but I've been told it's pretty eerie. . .like I said, I can't read their programming, but the physical structure of their neural network is highly similar to the androids from the Commonwealth. From comparing the two, I've concluded that the linguistic areas of the Raptor's 'brains' have been badly damaged. The damage is identical in all three specimens we've studied, which leads me to believe either that this particular part of their programming was, for some reason, highly susceptible to decay over time, or that at some point in the past all of the Raptors were linked up to a central mainframe. If that mainframe suffered damage, it could have been imprinted into each individual unit. As they are now, the damage makes them unable to speak, at least in a way we are capable of understanding," Bixby coughed at the end of his sentence and sat down in front of the archive terminal.

Dameon continued to study the Raptor's body. He picked up its arm. It felt cold and heavy.

"They've been a fascination to me. General Maxson, in his infinite wisdom, considers the Raptors to be just an annoyance. He has been utterly focused on defeating the Talon Company, which is why I'm more interested in this vault you told Elder Lyons about," Bixby fiddled with terminal's keyboard. After a few moments, the computer's projector began to hum loudly and it projected an image of the United States onto the far wall.

Dameon studied the massive map. All across the US he could see dots of tiny solid green triangles with numbers typed in above them. He moved in closer to be able to read the tiny writing.

Vault 107, Vault 87, Vault 13, Vault 109

Bixby looked up from his computer screen and watched Dameon study the map, "this is a map of all the vaults the Brotherhood knows to exist across America. The total number of vaults remains unknown; no one knows how many vaults were built. . .perhaps not even the Enclave. We only know about the vaults you see here because they were built by Vault-Tech to be open to the public, to those who could pay the entrance fee. Vault-Tech and the old government built many other vaults that we have no record of. Those secret vaults probably include the shelters the Enclave have been emerging from on the East Coast, and possibly the vault you spoke of under Quantico."

Dameon looked down to Virginia. There was no triangle over Quantico, "Vault 4."

"Yes, although we don't have records of any other vaults, from our databases on the West Coast and the files we've found here in the old Pentagon's archives we have been able to trace the paper trial and theorize where the other vaults must be. By combing through prewar requisition orders, unit deployments, and survey and excavation logs we've been able to ID almost a hundred additional vaults that you should see," Bixby began to furiously type. The monitor made a click and the projection went blank before popping back up, "ah there."

Dameon walked closer to the map. Bixby stood up from his terminal and walked up behind him. They both studied the changed image. In addition to the solid triangles marked with numbers, the projection now displayed many hollow triangles without numbers above them. There was a hollow triangle directly above the city of Quantico.

"It seems you were correct. We thought the vault was within a five mile radius of Quantico, wouldn't have thought it would be directly under the base. . .," Bixby trailed off while staring at the green image.

Dameon nodded to himself and then began to stare at all of the hollow triangles that had just appeared on the map. A few of them had an 'E' written above them, the symbol of the Enclave. Others were marked with question marks. As he continued to study the green map, his eyes came to rest on the landmass of Canada, over a tiny, hollow question marked triangle that lay over Toronto."

Toronto. . .Ronto. . .

"There's a vault in Ronto?"

"Huh," Bixby lost his chain of thought and peered closely at the map, "Toronto. . .yes, its highly likely."

"What does the Brotherhood know about Ronto?"

"Hmmm. . . .nothing. The closest the Brotherhood got to that city was the Pitt, during the scourge. The generals were so horrified by what they found crawling around the Pitt, that they lost all interest in further exploration. We've stayed around D.C. ever since."

Dameon turned from the map and stared at Bixby, "you said you didn't know where the Raptors were manufactured? Don't you think the Toronto Raptors were from Ronto?"

"Well," Bixby smiled, "of course that is a likely hypothesis. It may just be a random until designation . . .but it's not like the thought never crossed my mind-"

"The Brotherhood hasn't bothered to check it out up there?"

"No, as I told you, our General is focused on the Talon Company. We never saw any evidence to link them to the Raptors, so we haven't been looking for the Raptors' place of origin. While the Raptors have attacked our soldiers, those attacks have been few and far between compared with the damage the Talon Company has been doing. . .and all the information we had indicated that the Raptors were coming up from the South, not down from the Northwest so-"

Dameon shook his head, "yeah, now they're coming up from Vault 4 in the south, but they're originally from Ronto. Drybala told me that he was once a wanderer, he said he'd wandered the wastes from D.C to Ronto. Maybe he found the Raptors up there and reprogrammed them so they would obey him."

Bixby's brow furrowed in thought, "possibly. No one has been up there since the war. I guess this Drybala could have found them in the ruins of the city."

"That vault. Whatever vault was up there. He must have found them there. That's how Drybala knew so much about other vaults. That could be where he got the materials to refurbish Vault 4. It would explain how the Raptors survived for all the years since the war unnoticed. . ."

Bixby shrugged, "okay, it is an interesting theory. Perhaps you are correct, and the overseer found the androids in Toronto. I don't understand how that can help us defeat the Talon Company, or how it will help you get into Quantico to get your friend," Bixby leaned over and clicked the map projection off.

"As one goes so will the other. . .they key is Drybala. . .," Dameon looked at the ceiling, "you told me a minute ago that the Raptors could have been linked to a central system at some time in the past."

"Its only one of several theories, but yes possibly."

"Maybe that is how Drybala could have reprogrammed all of them to follow him. . . .and maybe that system is still intact, in Ronto. If it is, and you went up there, mabye you could reprogram the Raptors, or deactivate them."

Bixby stayed silent, nodding along with what Dameon was saying.

"If you could do that, it would be a major blow to Drybala. . .without the Raptors, he might lose control of his vault . . . .at the very least it would be a major disruption. It could stall the Talon Company attacks in D.C. until you have time to regroup."

"Hmmmmm," Bixby mulled over Dameon's words, "I guess you could be correct. . .I'll prepare an immediate report."

Chapter 28: General Arthur Maxson

Dameon and Bixby stood in front of General Maxson's desk in one of the largest offices in A-Ring. Behind Maxson's seat were a row of windows that looked out onto the citadel courtyard. Dameon could see the new initiates training outside.

Maxson was in his early thirties. He had fair, blemish free skin and thick brown hair he had neatly parted to the side. His gaze was withering and Bixby was shrinking under it.

"So as I take it, you would like me to send a battalion of my soldiers up to Ronto, when we are already stretched to the breaking point down here, on some wild goose chase to stop a bunch of androids that in no way pose a significant threat to the Brotherhood?" Maxson's voice was cold and stern. He glared at the uncomfortable scribe, ignoring Dameon for the moment.

"Uhhh-" Bixby averted his gaze.

"And you also want me to divert resources I'm currently using to defend D.C. to attack a random Talon Company base in Virginia?"

Bixby stared down at the floor in silence.

Dameon was irritated by Maxson's tone and by Bixby's sheepishness "it's not random, it's their main base."

Maxson turned his glare to the mutated wanderer, "I read the report. And I'm not going to call you a liar, but do you have any evidence that anything you've told the Brotherhood is true?"

"Evidence?" Dameon squinted.

"Yes, solid tangible evidence. For whatever reason, Lyons may be able to take you at your word, but I see no convincing reason to do so. You've come here with an outlandish story involving a shadowy overseer and a Canadian android army and I'm just supposed to believe you and part with my scarce soldiers when they are desperately needed to hold back the Talon Company," Maxson scoffed.

"Drybala is the Talon Company. He, the Talon Company, and the Raptors are all part of the same unit."

"I know, I said I read your report!" Maxson browbeat himself for raising his voice, he then took a breath and started anew, "no one here loves the Brotherhood more than I do. I have it in my blood. I would gladly give my life in its service. That is why I am unwilling to throw soldiers away on a fool's errand."

Dameon stared at the man and felt his few remaining teeth with his tongue, "then use me."

"Use you?" Maxson shrugged.

"Send me to Ronto and I will try and deactivate the Raptors."

"I've read the report. There's no evidence this Raptor 'mainframe' even exists or that they are linked to it. Its just a theory. And to be honest, I'm suspicious of your motives. . .this girl you want to rescue-"

"Chloe," Dameon stretched out her name like it was music.

"As I see it, there's no evidence she exists either. You say she was able to survive the blast at the memorial?

"Yes."

"And now she is being held by the head of the Talon Company. . .in Quantico . .this seems convenient. Many trusted Brotherhood soldiers have told me about you. They do not think you are the heroic type. What is your true angle?"

"My angle?" Dameon cocked his head.

"Why do you want to save this girl?"

"Because. . .because I need her and I promised her. We are two of the same. I used to know myself, now that I'm not with her I'm lost," Dameon trailed off for a second, "I think of nothing else. . .I have nothing else. . .she told me how she used to see the faces. . .the faces of all the people that. . .I think she was seeing them for me, because now I see them," Dameon took a step closer to the Brotherhood general, "I need her or they are never going to go away."

Maxson was unimpressed, "what does this overseer want with her? And why did he order the Talon Company to begin attacking?"

"He believes that the bloom made the desert worthwhile enough for him to try and control. . . .like his vault."

"He's doing this all just for power? A fool-"

"No different then the Brotherhood," Dameon coughed.

Maxson banged his hand on his desk, "really? We do not round up civilians. We do not burn uncooperative settlements. We do not-"

"Why did you pull Three Dog from the air?"

"What?" Maxson said in half disbelief. He leaned in closer.

"Why did you pull Three Dog from the air?"

"How does that matter?" Maxson nearly chuckled at Dameon's audacity. He leaned back in seat, and then seeing that Dameon was really waiting for an explanation he cocked his head, "because that new rouge DJ Kate was piggy backing on his signal. We haven't been able to triangulate her, so until we do-"

"But why? She hasn't killed any of your soldiers. She's another voice yammering away on the radio, playing old music."

"She's propaganda. And since the start of her broadcasts coincided with the bloom, I believe she is Talon Company propaganda."

"Talon Company propaganda? Three Dog is propaganda, Brotherhood propaganda. That's the only reason you protect his broadcasts. You want to control the airwaves, decide what people can listen to. Once you can't control it you try and take it all away. . .that's what Drybala wants. To control the wasteland, because he doesn't like things he can't control."

"Are you trying to make a philosophic point about the Brotherhood?" Maxson gritted his teeth.

"No, I don't care about the Brotherhood or what you choose to do. I don't care about Drybala either. You can both do whatever you want, you can both go to hell. I just want to see Chloe and I think that you are the only way I'm ever going to get to do that.. . .now I am asking you, if I can shut down the Raptors, will the Brotherhood help me get her back from Quantico?"

"If. . .if such a mainframe exists, and it can truly help us in our struggle . ." Maxson looked at Bixby for a moment and then paused, "if you can do so, then the Brotherhood will be at your service.."

This....


is really friggin good.

I only read the first post, but I'll be sure to devote a good portion of whatever free time I have catching up.

A/N: Thanks Mr.SmileySmile. Hope you keep on reading.

Part IV: The Raptors of Ronto

Chapter 29: Vertibird

Dameon adjusted himself, trying to find a more comfortable sitting position on the unpadded rear seat of the vertibird. The sand colored, steel walls around him were cold to the touch and whined from the wind outside. The whole craft shook from the vibration of the duel whirling propellers. He felt unsafe cooped up in the tiny tin can, and he tried to squint past the pilot to see the landscape up ahead through the glass windshield.

The vertibird pilot was a young Brotherhood knight with shaggy red hair and an easy going attitude. He seemed to enjoy flying, at least from the look on his face. He effortlessly played with and tweaked the numerous dials, knobs, and blinking buttons that kept the craft up in the air. He was smiling and humming along with the radio, bobbing his head to the music the whole time.

"I'm a mighty, mighty man, I'm young and I'm my prime,

"Oh, I'm a mighty, mighty man, I'm young and I'm my prime,

I don't pick my jobs; I'm ready for any old kind. . . *

Dameon tried to shut his ears to drown out the incessant music. He clutched the hunting rifle he had laid across his hard lap tighter then ever, digging his fingers deep into its reddish wooden stock. The Brotherhood had given Dameon access to their armory and his choice of any weapon, before sending him off to Ronto in the captured Enclave vertibird. For a while, Dameon had felt like a kid in a candy store. He inspected every plasma rifle, flame thrower, and missile launcher with eager hands and sparkling eyes, but something about this old hunting rifle comforted him. When he gripped it, his hands seemed to know what do to all by themselves, and this familiarity, like the weapon was an extension of his body, reminded him of the past and being young again. He could picture himself as a young wanderer, hunting game out in the wastes.

Besides the hunting rifle, Dameon had taken a few grenades and a plasma pistol with him as back up. The pistol's futuristic looking design, full of snaking wires and a green glowing barrel inspired awe. It had reminded him of Kiera when he had seen it lying next to a stack of mines in the crowded armory.

Scribe Bixby had been able to repair Dameon's sneak suit, it had only been damaged lightly from his battle with the Vault 4 Praetorian. Dameon had it slung over his shoulders, ready to activate it and disappear into thin air at a moments notice.

Now however, Dameon was doing the opposite of sneaking. The vertibird was a noisy aircraft; it was visible for miles from the wasteland below. Dameon pictured the lonely contrail of a single rocket arcing up to his aircraft and reducing it and him to chunks of flaming flesh and metal.

Dameon's mission was to locate the facility that housed the Raptor mainframe somewhere around Ronto. Besides his weapons and standard gear, the Brotherhood had supplied him with a map showing the location of the Ronto Vault, a high level quantum computer hack to enable him to access the Raptor mainframe, and a tiny satellite communication headset, that would allow him to contact Citadel command once he had access to the system. It worked like a long range two-way satellite radio. It had been manufactured for a single use; its tiny e-cell battery would only function for less than an hour.

"When there's work to do you better send for the mighty one,

Yes, he'll stay on the job until the job is done. . ." *

Dameon leaned forward from his seat and stared out past the boogying pilot, through the windshield of the vertibird. Below he saw a sea of dead, petrified trees that stretched from horizon to horizon, a wavy brown tapestry under a nearly clear blue sky.

"You listening to Three Dog?" Dameon tapped the pilot on his shoulder.

"Huh?" the pilot lowered the volume of the radio and looked back to Dameon. He pulled his pilot headset off to the side and pointed to his crusty ear.

"I said you listening to Three Dog? I thought they yanked him off the air."

"Don't know man. Wouldn't get GNR all the way out here anyway," the pilot pressed a button on the large console laid out in front of him and a holo-tape popped out from a tiny drive. The pilot snatched the tape up and waived it at Dameon, "these are re-runs, some of my favorite tunes."

Dameon nodded, "how long have you been flying?"

"I volunteered the minute they got this bird. Saw the Enclave soar over D.C. like eagles when I was a kid; wanted in on the action as soon as I could get it. Guess it's been like. . .three years now."

"Ever been up to Ronto?" Dameon made his way back to his seat.

"Naw, far as I know no one from the Brotherhood's been up there."

The pilot banked the vertibird right. The gees made Dameon's stomach press against the wall of his abdomen.

"See those up there?" the pilot was pointing out the front windshield, off to the right, to a chain of craggy mountain tops that poked up against wispy clouds, just over the horizon.

Dameon fought his flight sickness and scooted over next to the pilot on his knees, "yeah, what am I looking at?"

"The Adirondacks. Your stop," the pilot made a big beaming smile and then turned back to his controls.

Dameon examined the approaching mountain chain more closely. The mountains looked like they had once been covered in thick green deciduous forest, but now they were brown and grey, covered with dead trees, piles of boulders, and meadows of mud. A few green, leafy outcrops stuck out like oasises from the brown morass; otherwise the land below was dead and rotten like a forest in a permanent winter.

"You aren't dropping me off in Ronto?"

"These birds can make maybe a six hundred mile round trip, few hundred more with these drop tanks. Ronto's past their range. Setting you down a few miles south of the Canadian border."

Dameon slunk back to his seat and did a final check of his gear. He turned the sneak suit on and off to make sure it was back up and running, and then examined each one of his weapons, clearing the chamber, and reloading them to ensure they wouldn't jam. He checked his cloak pockets to make sure he still had the computer hack and his head set, before scanning the blue sky. He shielded his eyes as the sun swung by the windshield, blinding him.

"Okay big dog," the pilot pulled a red lever and the right wall of the vertibird began to retract up into the ceiling.

A wall of freezing cold air rushed into the vertibird and chilled Dameon to the bone. He braced himself to the noise and the wind.

The pilot turned back to Dameon, "you hook the c-clamp on the top of that rope up to the eye hook above the door. I'll lower this bird and you can slide on down the rope to the ground."

Dameon could barely hear the pilot over the roar of the wind. He poked his head outside of the vertibird and looked at the forest four hundred feet below. The old tree trunks creaked from the wind stirred up by the vertibird's propellers. A pack of feral dogs ran for cover off in the distance, little dots under an umbrella of dead tree branches.

Dameon snapped the rope onto the hook above the door, "you kidding me with this? Why don't you just land?"

"Not enough fuel, got to turn back in a minute. Just slide down-"

"That rope's not even touching the ground."

"Don't worry man, you climb down and I'll hover just above the treetops. Shouldn't be more than a ten foot drop. Trust me."

Dameon shook his head and grabbed the rope with both of his rocky hands. He put his legs over the side of the vertibird and out of the door. The sight of the mountains and forests rocking below to the motion of the vertibird gave him extreme vertigo. He momentarily closed his eyes and slipped over the edge as the vertibird nosed down closer and closer to the ground.

Dameon was nervous that the old, braided rope wouldn't support his ever increasing weight. He had never been too keen on heights, and especially hated dangling below a helicopter like fishing bait on a hundred foot long line. When he looked down and saw his boots swinging over the peak of a craggy mountain top he nearly threw up.

After a few more minutes of pressing forward, the vertibird came to a hover over a relatively flat stretch of dead forest. Dameon hung down from the end of the rope, still dozens of feet off the ground, above the high tree tops. He waited for the pilot to come closer to the ground, and then realized the craft wasn't getting any lower.

You've got to be kidding me. . .

Dameon glared up at the vertibird for a moment. The sun was directly above it so it looked like a dark shadow with edges of blinding fire.

Dameon let go of the rope. He felt weightless for a second and then crashed in a heap onto the rocks and mud below.

Dameon wasn't sure if he was injured when he hit the ground. He slowly, painfully stood up, and brushed off his arms before peering up at the sky. He waived at the vertibird, which began to climb higher and higher into the sky, before banking sharply and disappearing over the mountains to the whine of the propellers.

After a few moments, Dameon was all alone in the wilderness.

*Fallout 3 Soundtrack: Roy Brown, Mighty Mighty Man First Released 1948.

A/N: Now approaching the end. . .hope you enjoy.

Chapter 30: The Adirondacks

Dameon paused in his step and stared down at the mud in front of his feet. Below him was clump of thick, yellowish fur, next to a small mound of Yao Gaui scat. Dameon probed the bear's feces with his boot tip. It was still fresh and moist to the touch. He spit into the dirt next to it and peered up the mountain in front of him.

The Adirondacks were higher than any of the mountains Dameon had ever seen in his lifetime. Their peaks seemed to scraqe the edge of the sky and hold up the low hanging clouds. During his childhood in the backwoods of Ohio, and back when he had spent his days wandering through Pennsylvania and DC, he had seen many mountains and deep rocky valleys, but never such towering heights. The massive landscape before him now was alien yet beautiful; the rising and falling ground broke up the monotony of rock after rock, tree after tree.

Dameon had been following in the tracks of a Yao Guai for the three days since he had jumped down from the vertibird. It, like him, had for some reason been drawn northward to Canada. In all the time Dameon had spent tracking it, he hadn't seen a single person, or any sign of civilization. Slowly, the forest had grown greener and thicker, full of bushes, shrubs, and towering pines.

The deep woods were completely devoid of roads, radio towers, power lines, or any of the other rusting signs of ancient society. They were more empty and lonely then Point Lookout. Dameon had been forced to navigate through the forest using only the sun and the stars. He was proud he could still do so; he hadn't had to follow the Big Dipper to Polaris since he was a child.

The only company Dameon had in the wilderness were his reoccurring thoughts of Chloe. He would think about brushing her silky hair, caressing the smooth skin on her back, and slowly kissing her warm lips. He spent hours thinking about what he'd say to her, if they ever saw one another again. He thought about all the things he wished he'd told her when they were together; all the things that made him feel weak and vulnerable inside, all the things that might make her fall in love with him one more time. She was the only force that pushed him forward now. The Brotherhood, the Raptors, Drybala, MegaTon, the wastelanders, all of them were faint, fleeting ghosts in the back of his mind as he trudged through the vast, endless wilderness of northern New York.

Dameon noticed a broken tree branch, still twitching on the tree, next to a dry creek bed, up the mountain ahead of him. He was getting very close to the Yao Guai now. It couldn't be more than a few hundred yards up the mountain.

Darkness was falling and Dameon was glad for it. His eyes had become more and more sensitive to daylight. He had begun to move only from dusk till dawn, hunkering down under the shade of broken trees and the darkness of mountain caves during daylight, like a vampire. His body too had deteriorated since leaving DC. The joints that had been freed by the doctors in Vault 4 had re-ossified, and his skin had hardened like clay. Although each step was painful, he could sense that his goal was just ahead of him, it was like a mirage that he could he feel on his lips, its taste lingered like honey.

He could almost see Chloe up on that mountain top above him, gently stroking the fur of the wild Yao Gaui, her brown hair fluttering in the cold breeze.

As Dameon slowly scrambled up a large rock pile, next to the steep mountain edge, he saw the Yao Guai standing twenty or so yards up from him. He flicked on his sneak suit, and like a shadow, moved in closer and closer for the kill.

The beast didn't notice his presence. It was pawing at the ground with its enormous steak-knife sized claws; tearing up the thick soil to reveal the few precious tree roots that were green with nutrients and moisture. It panted a cloud of fog into the dry night air, as a stream of foamy drool hung down from its jaws.

The temperature on top of the mountain was much milder and cooler than in D.C. During the night, drops of moisture that hung in the air would condense out into a thin layer of white frost that blanketed the hard ground and clung to the trees.

Dameon inched closer and closer to the bear, until he was only a few feet away. He was so close he could smell it's mating musk, seeping out in little droplets from the bear's shaggy hair on each side of its blubbery neck. He could hear the gurglely sounds of the bear's swallows as it licked up the frost.

As the beast lowered its snout down to the ground, digging around for insects in a bed of dry pine needles, Dameon leveled his hunting rifle at its head.

He didn't need the scope; he didn't need to aim really. He was so close to the Yao Guai he could have almost touched it with the tip of his rifle's barrel. As he put the stock to his shoulder he could feel his father's presence right behind him, guiding the barrel, checking his stance, correcting his finger position. The old huntsman, Gavin Rayes, the father he barely knew, who had taught him everything that mattered, was still watching over him. When Dameon finally took the shot he could almost feel Gavin pat him on the back.

Dameon butchered the bear where it fell. He put all the strips of its gamey meat that he could carry onto his sore back, and took them with him up to the very top of the mountain, where he planned to make camp for the night.

Chapter 31: The Plains of Ronto

From Dameon's perch high atop the mountain he could see deep into the wastes of Canada, far below, where the tall mountains and rolling hills slowly flattened into the wide open plains of Ronto. Ronto was less than twenty miles away now, Northeast of where he was perched, but its skyline was just a blur from his vantage point. According to the map Bixby had given him, the Ronto Vault would be west of the city, buried deep into the plains.

Dameon had started a large campfire to cook the toxins out of the Yao Gaui meat. Unlike Brahmin or dog, Yao Guai meat would sicken you if you ate it raw and it would be unbelievably tough and bloody.

The smell of the roasting meat was pleasant and comforting. It made Dameon's dry mouth water and he delicately rotated each strip of flesh on its wooden skewer.

While he waited for the meat to blacken and char, Dameon walked up a jumbled pile of rocks to the narrow summit of the mountain, where he could get a better view of the land below without the interference from the light of his campfire.

The mountain's summit was a tiny, craggy outcrop that was less than two feet wide and only a few feet long. Dameon wobbled on top it, trying to brace his back against a large boulder in order to balance himself. From the very top of the peak, he glanced down at the hills and plains.

Ronto was off to his right. Through the darkness, he could see that it was a vast, ruined city. He could make out a long skyline of decaying buildings and towering smoke stacks. Some of the structures still stood completely upright; others seemed to have collapsed against one another. It looked just like D.C., full of rubble and ruin. . .except for the lights. . .

Much to Dameon's surprise, Ronto flickered with the light of thousands of tiny fires that dotted the ruined city like lights on a Christmas tree. Dameon had no idea where the fires were coming from; it didn't look like the buildings themselves were burning. He doubted the fires could be torches; he wouldn't be able to see them from such a distance. It was possible they could be campfires like his own, set by a city teeming with hundreds of wastelanders, but he had never seen so vast a settlement, or one that was so unafraid of attracting attention from miles around.

As he pondered the mysterious points of light, Dameon decided to flick on his com set to see if anyone in the strange city was broadcasting like in D.C. or the Pitt. It would also assure him that the tiny headset would function when he truly needed it.

Dameon fed the ear bud into his right ear and turned it on. Static crackled and he flipped from frequency to frequency for a few moments, hoping to hear some sign of life to keep him company, before he would be forced to flick the device off to save the battery. As Dameon was about to give up, he heard a familiar voice coo into his ear.

"DJ Cosmic Kate here,
Are you listening? Are you tuned in,
To the soft heartbeat of the wasteland?
From a far off Erie mountaintop,
To the swirling DC sands?
Are you bushwhacking your way through,
Point Lookout, or being whipped in the Pitt?
Are you hiding from cannibals or mutants?
Knee deep in the [censored]?
Well listen up little daddy-o,
Cause this next song goes out to you,
And while you're up on that mountain,
Admire the view,
Don't think about her body,
Don't picture her face,
Don't strain to hear her voice,
Don't long for her taste. . .
Take a deep breath,
Wipe your eyes,
And do not despair.
Because between you and me,
I know she's still out there,
Somewhere. . . .

Somewhere beyond the sea,
Somewhere waiting' for me,
My lover stands on golden sands. . .*"

* Bobby Darin 1958

Sorry my friend, I have completely forgotten this in the rush of finals. I'll be sure to catch up latter this week, sorry for the lack of response on such an amazing adventure.

Chapter 32: EoRaptor Division

Dameon crested the last hill that lay between him and the area surrounding the Ronto Vault. The high mountains and thick forests of the Adirondacks had given way to the wide open stretches of the grassy plains of Ronto. Although Ronto had been nuked ages ago, it wasn't hit nearly as hard as D.C., and the plant life had returned with a vengeance. Waist high grasses and clumps of thick cat-tails shot up through the black, muddy soil. Dameon's boots got stuck in the mud, and the high weeds tripped him with every step as he continued forward, following the stars and the moon to the red dot Bixby had placed on his map.

The red dot became just a vague marker once Dameon was confronted with the vastness of the landscape around him. The dot marked off what was really a five-or-so mile circle, a grey area, somewhere in which, Bixby believed Dameon would be able to find the vault. Dameon knew the vault's exact location would likely be purposely hidden to blend in with the surroundings. Vault-Tech always tried to hide the entrances to their vaults, to assure the uninvited couldn't find an easy point from which to blast their way in

As Dameon waded through the high grass, he came to a small, winding stream that ran down from the mountains behind him to the South. He hadn't seen the stream at first and had stepped right into it, filling his boot with icy mountain runoff. As he shook his leg and tried to wiggle his stiffened toes, he studied the curvy path the stream took northwards. Through countless arcs and bends it wound its way around a low hill that Dameon thought could be a mound of displaced earth - a sign of the hidden vault.

Dameon followed the stream until he got to the top of a nearby hill. He then studied his new surroundings. The plains around him were barren and empty in every direction except northward. Through the billowing grass, he could see row after row of darkened shapes that lay less than a mile ahead of him. Beyond those shapes was another low earthen mound like the one he was standing on. That mound was capped with waving grass and sapling trees. There were two bright lights on the face of that mound that were backlighting the strange shapes. Dameon tried to squint at the odd shapes in front of the far off mound, but he couldn't tell what they were through the backlighting and the all enveloping darkness.

Dameon made his way forward under the brilliant canopy of stars. The plain turned into a marsh of sorts, and water seeped up from the mud, into his boots with each step forward. The night air was cold and frigid; each one of his breaths was visible as he pressed forward. His toes felt hard and numb through his saturated socks.

After walking for fifteen minutes, the shapes at the northern end of the plain became more defined and delineated. As Dameon stopped to scan them, he saw that each shape was an individual figure. They looked like several hundred man-shaped statues that reminded Dameon of the bronze soldiers at the Anchorage Memorial. There were rows upon rows of them that stretched across the open plain, barely illuminated by the two white lights on the face of the northern mound.

A few of the statues were much larger then the others. These shapes didn't appear humanoid, but looked like huge mythical beasts standing on two tall, tyrannosaurus-like legs. There were other massive shapes behind them that were lower to the ground and more squat. They appeared to be large, featureless boxes, that each had a single long, thin, antennae jutting out from them.

Dameon let out a deep breath. The air around him turned white with water vapor and he reached into his travel sac to get a scope for his rifle. He clicked it on and peered through the glass. The lights on the mound drowned out the features of everything in front of them, making them mere shadows, but the area below the lights was perfectly illuminated. Slightly below the two lights, a small tunnel had been cut into the rock towards the base of the earthen mound. At the very back of the tunnel was a narrow, wire mesh door.

The vault.

Dameon had explored abandoned vaults before, mainly around the D.C. area. They were normally horrible places; dank caves Mireluks used for spawning. They were always nasty, frightening places to venture into.

Dameon nodded to himself and took a step forward. As he did, he tripped over a large object and fell face first onto the ground. He landed with a splash; the saturated soil bubbled and oozed around his body. He wiped a streak of mud off his chalky face and then turned to see what he had tripped over.

It was an old corpse, one of several lying together in a pile. Dameon inched closer to the corpses and could make out three separate bodies. One of the bodies was that of an Enclave soldier, in green power armor that had been cut to pieces by some sort of heavy weaponry. His face was half rotted away, and Dameon could see his teeth poking up through the shriveled skin of his rotting jaw. The other bodies were two wastelanders wearing Brahmin skin coats and no shoes. Their feet were black and bony. They hadn't been dead nearly as long as the soldier, their bodies were still bloated and stank with decay.

As Dameon went to cover his nose he noticed he was actually surrounded by corpses. He had missed several other heaps of bodies in the direction he had come from; they lay hidden from casual view by the high grass and weeds. Ahead of him, he could see still more bodies strewn across the grassy plain in various states of rot and decay. All of them had been long dead and were not moving. Their white, bleached bones poked up like saplings from between the thick weeds. Dameon counted each individual body he could see; at least fifty corpses lay strewn across the eerie wasteland cemetery.

Dameon gingerly inspected a few of the corpses up close. There were some more Enclave soldiers, three raggedly dressed wastelanders, a group of well armed Pitt raiders, and two ghouls. They all lay rotting together under a beautiful chandelier of stars and the full white moon. The sight was surreal.

Dameon rose up from examining the bodies, and nervously looked forward at the strange shapes ahead. They were definitely statues, hundreds of them. The humanoid statues looked like delicately carved soldiers now. Dameon could see that weapons were placed in their hands and helmets shielded their heads. He tried to make out their faces, but their colors and contours were still blurred by the backlight. Their lifelike appearance gave Dameon pause. He stood in place for several minutes, not moving a muscle, while scanning the statues for any twitch of movement.

The figures up ahead were completely stone. None of them moved an inch, they stood perfectly still in various contorted poses the whole time Dameon watched them. Next to the soldier statues, towered the strange, giant monsters. They had flat, traqezoid-shaped bodies that sat high up on their spindly dinosaur legs. Next to them were the large boxes which, as Dameon cautiously inched closer and closer, began to look more and more like-

Tanks?

As that realization flooded Dameon's system, he crossed an invisible barrier. Bright red and blue lights on the sides of the two legged robots began to flash in a dazzling sequence.

Dameon's heart jumped into his throat. The only thing he could think of to do was to flip his sneak suit on. He immediately did so, and then ducked down for cover below the waist high grass on the wet ground.

Ahead of him, Dameon heard the army of statues groan to life. The tanks began to grind forward on squeaky bearings. Squads of soldiers blazed a path ahead of them, scanning the open plain with their rifles in long, deliberate sweeps. They walked forward in a solid line, nearly half a mile long, and four soldiers deep in a grid-like search pattern. As they scanned the area with their eyes, and felt their way through the thick grass, the soldiers called out to one another in war whoops that ran up and down their line in a-call-and-response pattern similar to the howls of wild wolves.

Between the soldiers and tanks were the two legged giants that Dameon had thought were stone monsters. They walked slowly with jerky, lizard-like steps. As they did so, they scanned the grassland with thick beams of red laser light that were projected out from a single glass sphere on the left side of their heads. Their single eyes looked like those of the naked Raptors Dameon had seen in the Citadel - soulless cherry-red orbs. Twenty millimeter canons swiveled back and forth on the top of their flat heads, while rocket launchers mounted next to them followed the tracking lasers's sweeps millimeter by millimeter. The massive machines' dinosaur legs ended in three giant steel toes that shook the ground with each step.

As the soldiers, tanks, and giant robots came closer and closer, Dameon began to crawl on his hands and knees through the grass, trying to slip towards the vault unnoticed.

The soldiers began to converge where Dameon had first broken the invisible barrier.

Dameon prayed they couldn't see him or trace his path. He continued crawling while staying as low to the ground as possible, using the full moon as a compass. As he went to draw the pistol from his side to hold in front of him, he heard the footsteps of the first line of soldiers coming up on either side of him. When it seemed like they were almost right on top of him, Dameon froze in place and lay down on his back, pistol to his chest, ready to riddle anything that came at him with plasma fire.

Two soldiers were walking right past him on both sides, part of the long line of soldiers, sweeping across the plain.

The soldier to Dameon's right paused in his step and brushed down some of the nearby grass with his hand. Dameon studied the soldier's strange armor. His armor looked similar to that of the Praetorians in Vault 4, but it had thick, white, Kevlar-like fabric that overlaid the segmented steel joints which must have been installed for winter combat. Two large US flag patches were emblazoned on the soldier's helmet and shoulders.

"Eoop. . . .ooooo," the soldier turned to his companion on the left.

The other soldier made a brief nod as if he had understood him, and then jerked his head like he had hiccupped, "yooo-hooop."

The eerie call rang up and down the line, making Dameon shiver. He hated the creepy Raptor calls and only caught his breath when the line of them moved forward and disappeared below the grass line.

Dameon tried to cool his nerves and continued to pull himself along the ground. His sneak suit was becoming caked with mud and was dripping wet. The mud was slippery and slick, it was hard to crawl though as he just pushed it back into piles with each kick forward. After a few moments of exhausted movement, Dameon noticed the tiny pools of water in the mud and grass around him were trembling. As he looked up to the sky to find out why, a huge shape covered up the light of the moon.

Oh-Ahhhhh

Dameon instantly log rolled out of the way of an enormous, three toed steel foot. The foot slammed down into the wet soil where he had been crawling, sending up a shockwave of mud and water. The towering robot was attracted to Dameon's sudden movement, and began to scan the surrounding grass with the wide tracking laser shooting out of its red-cyclops eye. As its head swiveled around, a row of red and blue lights flickered hypnotically on its side.

The mesmerizing light display drew the attention of the Raptor soldiers who were still walking the grid line. They began to jog back towards the mechanical giant.

Dameon cowered down in the weeds, terrified of the sight of the mechanical hulk. He had no idea what to do. Within a few seconds, the robot's wide laser beam began to sweep unbearably close to where he was hiding.

At the last second, Dameon decided to make a break for it.

Dameon took off at full speed, paralleling the vault entrance. The moment he stood up, he heard a serious of pops whizz past him as the Raptors converging on his position opened fire.

Fhit. feew.

Dameon felt a bullet graze his arm and he ducked down into the grass, shuffling forward in a zigzag pattern like a fox. He felt like a frightened wildebeest being hunted on the African savannas; the Raptors pursing him cackled to each other like hyenas.

The twenty millimeter cannon on top of one of the two legged robots shredded the weeds near Dameon until they were fibrous pulp. Dameon panted and tried to crawl forward even faster; his boots slipped on the mud. As he fell flat onto the ground, one of the tanks in the rear fired a long arc of concentrated electricity into the area where he had fallen. The surrounding grass burst into flames and the wet ground crackled from the current.

A group of Raptors began to close in on Dameon's position, so he desperately pulled himself down into a large pool of water that lay between a gap in the burning grass. The water was slightly over a foot deep and was freezing cold. Dameon could feel it numb what normal skin he had left. His weapons, his sneak suit, his clothes, everything on him was soaked in an instant, but he was able to submerge his whole body save the very tip of his nose.

Dameon tried to hold his body perfectly still under the freezing water. He could feel the giant robots shake the water around him with each step, while the tanks off in the distance hummed in a dull rumble. After a minute, the heavy footsteps stopped and Dameon guessed the robotic monsters and accompanying Raptors must have been within a few feet of him. He continued to hold his breath through the pain of his aching lungs. He opened his eyes to try and see if he could see anything above the water's surface. Directly above him, Dameon could see the shadowy outline of a Raptor soldier, illuminated by the burning grass. The Raptor had paused next to Dameon, his combat boot inches from Dameon's face. Dameon struggled as hard as he could to continue to hold his breath.

After a moment, the Raptor walked away, continuing his search pattern.

Dameon sat up from the water the second his lungs were about to burst. He tried to take shallow breaths, but had to pant to regain oxygen. He kneeled up from the water and watched as a tank glided by on his right with three Raptors following in its wake.

The tank and Raptor soldiers were headed away from Dameon, continuing their search of the grassland. Dameon watched them leave, half in shock. Far ahead of them, he could see several of the two legged monsters lumber off in the distance, towards the hills, with slow, deliberate steps.

When he felt the danger had passed, Dameon brushed himself off and turned to look up at the moon. He regained his sense of direction and realized the vault mound was now only fifty yards ahead of him.

As the Raptor soldiers, robots, and tanks continued to search the vault perimeter, Dameon was able to silently sneak up to the outer vault door.

A/N: Only two chapters left, so stay tuned. . .

Chapter 33: Vault 1

Dameon slowly made his way down a small set of granite stairs carved into the rocks that formed the entrance tunnel to the Ronto Vault. It was dark inside, the main lights were off, only a few flickering emergency bulbs mounted into the ceiling illuminated the dank entrance corridor. As Dameon came down to the last step, his boots splashed down into a shallow, muddy puddle. He paused and appraised his dim surroundings.

The vault blast door was open; there was a large hole in the concrete wall in front of Dameon in the shape of a gear. The hole was six feet wide and tall; the concrete around it was several feet thick. The blast door had apparently been open for a long time, perhaps since the bombs had fallen, as the edges of the opening were covered in rust and moss and had been warped by corrosion. The vault door itself was inside the vault somewhere, now out of view.

Dameon paused for a second and did a brief re-check of his gear to make sure he hadn't lost anything in the chaos outside. As he went through his pockets, he listened to noises echo down from above. He could still hear the footsteps of the giant robots patrolling the grasslands; their movements made sprinkles of dust rain down from the rocks. Dameon could also hear trickles of water dripping down from the vault ceiling; they dropped down into the water at his feet to the buzz of the emergency lights.

While Dameon fumbled around in one of his pockets, his found his com headset and computer hack. The tiny devices had become completely saturated, water oozed out of the headset's foam ear buds. Dameon shook the headset off and then clipped it to the outside of his cloak, hoping that would allow it to air dry. He then clicked on his sneak suit's active cammo and prepared to enter the vault proper, nervous of how many more Raptor soldiers or unknown monsters would be waiting for him inside.

As Dameon walked through the vault entrance hole, he could see the vault door hanging down from the ceiling on the other side. The door looked like a giant piston, dangling from two long, steel beams. The head of the piston was in the shape of a gear, the individual cogs of which could lock into the grooves cut into the vault opening like dozens of steel teeth, producing an airtight fit. The top of the piston head was two feet of thick steel and weighed several tons. The metal beams holding it aloft creaked under the constant strain.

On the face of the piston head, Dameon could see black lettering.

Vault 1.

Dameon blinked and reread the words in front of him. He muttered them to himself in a surprised tone, "Vault. . .one?"

While Vault 4 may have seemed otherworldly inside, the concept of finding a vault numbered four was expected. Dameon thought there probably had to a be a Vault 4 or a Vault 5 somewhere out there in the wasteland, just like there was a Vault 87 and 92 in D.C. The numbers were there for some reason, it seemed reasonable to fill in the blanks and assume a consecutive sequence. However, the thought that there was actually a Vault 1, and that he was standing in it, seemed impossible, almost mythical. That was the kind of feat reserved for another Vault Dweller or some future chosen one.

Dameon just stood in front of the massive door for several moments, completely stunned, reading and rereading the lettering over and over again, waiting for it all to sink in. Water continued to drip down around him. The deep halls ahead seemed empty and half flooded. He felt weak and wobbly as his shock wore off and the adrenaline left his system.

It was only the echoes of the lumbering giants above that finally hurried Dameon deeper inside.

The interior of Vault 1 was a labyrinth of zigzagging corridors and long, winding halls. Only the first few hallways were flooded, the stagnant water was held back by the bottom lips of the doors that marked the end of each segment of hall like a gargantuan submarine.

Dameon had expected the vault to be full of ruin and decay like any other abandoned vault - the normal life cycle included stages of scavenging by wasteland nomads, infestation by mutated wildlife, and re-colonization by desperate settlers or ghouls hiding from sunlight.

Vault 1, however, was completely devoid of life. The hallways were empty and dark; it felt like a long sealed tomb. No Mirelurks, mole rats, or Yao Guai had made it their home. No wastelanders had plundered it for prewar cargo. No ghouls mindlessly roamed its halls.

The vault walls were still lined with faded Vault-Tech propaganda posters - the smiling Vault Boy pointed the way to each of Vault 1's long forgotten amenities. As Dameon walked further and further inside, he saw that boxes of old food were still neatly stacked inside of Vault 1's dark vending machines. The empty vault living quarters were rife with prewar clutter. Even electrical components – light bulbs, MF batteries, coils of copper wire; items that were worth thousands of caps to any wasteland merchant, sat untouched on the tiled floors.

Dameon concluded that no one must have entered the vault in centuries. Perhaps no one else had known it existed, or all who had ventured here had been slain by the mechanical fauna patrolling the perimeter.

It took over half an hour for Dameon to wind his way down to the vault's central hub – the Vault Atrium. The whole time he had been trying to find a mainframe, if the vault had even been equipped with one. His way forward had been illuminated by dim lights which were built into shallow recesses on each side of the floor. They gave every hall the appearance of a landing strip interrupted by a series of directional signs that flickered on and off overhead. These signs pointed the way forward, and marked off all vault locations as he came to them. The classrooms, the cafeteria, the medical lab all passed by, dark as the depths of space through thick glass walls.

Dameon was overawed at the sight of Vault 1's Atrium. It seemed grand even though it was shadow of its former self in the darkness. The atrium floor was a sea of green tile dotted by fancy wooden café tables, large circular benches, and gigantic bronze plant urns, giving it the appearance of a prewar train station. Ornate columns lined the edges of the atrium next to several empty, marble kiosks. The few lights that buzzed around the grand expanse bathed the giant room in a dull yellow and cast eerie shadows onto the towering walls.

While the rest of the vault had no signs of its occupants, the atrium was full of old bodies. All of them were now skeletons, mats of old fabric still clung to their bones, cementing them to their final resting places. Some of the skeletons were still seated on the benches, or at café tables with empty plates and rusted utensils lying at their fingertips. All looked prewar; they were wearing the tattered threads of business suits or military uniforms instead of Brahmin skins and crude metal armor.

Dameon thought it was unusual that none of them had on vault attire.

The atrium ceiling was three stories overhead and was pitch black, as the three chandeliers that hung down from it had long ago gone dark. A bit below the blackness, Dameon could see two faintly lit side tiers; illuminated by more vault signs that pointed the way towards the armory and vault administration. The tiers were lined with rooms that were built into the side walls. Each room had large glass front windows and an inviting central door. Towards the backs of the rooms Dameon could just make out a high rear counter and rows upon rows of cubbies built into the walls. As Dameon pondered their function, he realized that at one time they could have been vault shops just like in Vault 4. The dark vault atrium actually had a striking resemblance to the Market in Vault 4. It had the same tiered structure, the same regal accouterments, the same color scheme, the same towering ceiling.

Dameon peered up at the second tier of the atrium trying to find vault administration. He figured that would be the best place to look for the vault's mainframe. As he looked down each hall to try and find a staircase that went up there, he saw a more promising sign on his own level pointing northward.

Vault System Mainframe / Congressional Chambers.

Congressional chambers?

The idea of a Vault Congress was curious to Dameon. As far as he knew, all of the vaults were ruled by one totalitarian overseer, including Drybala's. That was the main reason the vaults were built by the prewar government; to assure the continued dominance of the capitalo-fascist state.

Dameon pondered the sign for only a moment before walking down the hall, carefully making his way towards the Vault System Mainframe.

The mainframe sign took Dameon down a series of empty and dim vault halls before it came to a fork of sorts, a T at the end of a long corridor that had signs pointing towards either end.

To Dameon's left, a sign pointed the way to a Spartan hallway that ended in a red sign - Vault Mainframe. He could see golden light poke out from the open doorway at the end of the hall. The tiny floor lights in front of him seemed to twinkle in a synchronized pattern like stars.

To Dameon's right a sign pointed down a much more well lit corridor lined with dozens of US flags and plaster busts of old politicians. That hall had a thick, green carpet. Decorative art deco style lighting fixtures hung down from overhead, making it the only truly illuminated section of the vault he had seen.

Dameon took a step down the hall and stared at the stern faces of the stone politicians. At the end of the hall he saw a curious mahogany table. A blue cloth was draqed over the table, embossed with a United States seal. On top of the table and table cloth were two large eagle statutes made of gold. They seemed vaguely familiar to Dameon as they glimmered in the light.

Above the adorned table were two red signs pointing in either direction

House Chambers. Senate Chambers.

Dameon paused. He was about to backtrack and continue on to the mainframe when his curiosity bested him. He walked down the rest of the imperial-looking hall and peered into the Senate Chamber off to his right.

It was not a vault senate chamber.

It was a giant room full of hand carved wooden desks and chairs that formed a half circle around a tall, oak podium. Behind the podium was an enormous United States flag that took up the entire back wall, running up from the blue carpeted floor to the towering, domed ceiling. An enormous crystal chandelier hung down from the dome, still glittering like a string of diamonds after all of these years.

Each desk and accompanying seat in the chamber had a name placard placed on it, facing the front podium. Dameon glanced at a few of the placards and read the names to himself.

NB Sr. Senator C. Richards. NC Jr. Senator M. Crystal. NH Sr. Senator K. Dewy.

Dameon paused at the last seat. A crumbling skeleton in the rags of a suit lay jumbled across the wood. Several of the seats had bones piled over them or next to them. A skeleton lay next to the front podium in front of the American flag. It looked like it had been giving a speech at the very end.

There were several skeletons dressed in military fatigues lying in the aisle. Bullet holes riddled the high walls and pop marked the giant flag.

Dameon looked up at the darkened balconies before walking back out of the chamber, utterly confused.

He decided to glance into the House Chamber before heading over to the mainframe.

The House Chamber was a large domed room just like the Senate, replete with a podium, giant flag, and more, stately seating. However, in the very back corner of the chamber, Dameon saw that someone, likely a child, had made a tiny nest. They had pushed away some of the congressional desks and in their place had laid down a vault cot. Around the cot, the floor was littered with old food tins, empty glass bottles, and assorted junk. A few toys lay next to the makeshift bed; a toy car, a teddy bear.

It was the most incongruous thing Dameon had seen in the vault, and the only sign that anyone else had been there since the bombs fell.

(******************************************************************)

Dameon finally came up to the red sign that pointed to the room that housed the mainframe. Nearly at the threshold, he paused for a moment to retrieve his headset. The small device seemed to have dried to an acceptable level and it only felt slightly squishy between his fingers. Dameon figured it would probably take the device a few moments to connect to Citadel Command, so he clicked it on to warm it up, and to make sure it still functioned. He was worried it might not get a signal from so deep within the vault.

As Dameon pondered that thought, he took a step forward towards the mainframe door. He had to squint at the light pouring out from its opening. While shielding his eyes and stepping inside, he heard a loud pop.

Dameon was instantly blinded and deafened. His body was thrown back towards the opposite wall by a pounding shockwave.

While lying motionless on the floor, he tried to figure out what had just happened. When his vision returned and he could form complete thoughts, he realized from the bits of metal shrapnel embedded into the wall and floor around him, that he had triggered a well hidden booby trap - three landmines rigged to a tripwire of nylon line that lay across the mainframe door.

Dameon tried to stand back up and make his way inside. When he did, he slipped and fell onto his knee. In pain, he looked down at his feet.

Oh [censored] me!

Two thirds of Dameon's right foot was missing; completely blown off by the concealed mines. He stared dumbly in silence at his mutilated appendage. What was left of his foot barely bled, it just slowly trickled blood unto the vault floor. The flesh that had been his toes and sole had completely ossified into a bony stub long before the mine had claimed it.

It would now be impossible for Dameon to ever be able to walk again, normally at least. With the majority of his foot missing, he had nothing to rest his weight on.

While the wound didn't hurt at the moment, the shock of being without his foot hit Dameon harder then the blast. It would take him months to get back to the Citadel, crippled as he now was. He wouldn't have half a chance at sneaking past the Raptor army outside. And Chloe. . .she had never seemed so far out of his grasp, not even when he had been forced to leave her in Vault 4. Quantico may as well have been the moon; he had no hope of being able to walk there again.

Dameon wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, cursing whoever had laid the trap, and his own carelessness, but he was too shaken up. He felt dizzy and exhausted. His system had no more adrenaline; there would be no burst of energy to carry him towards the mainframe door.

After all of this, after the Anchorage Memorial, Turtledove, the whole [censored] army of killing machines outside, ONE [censored] BOOBY TRAP screws it all!

Dameon wondered who had finally screwed him, who had set the trap. It seemed doubtful the androids would have done something like that, but there were no signs that any other wastelanders had ever ventured down here. . .

As Dameon leaned his head back onto wall behind him, he heard a soft voice speak up from the floor. It was coming from his headset.

Dameon snatched up the device and put the ear buds next to his ear. The tiny headset was undamaged from its prior immersion.

"Dameon? Are you there?" Bixby's familiar voice called out.

"Yeah?"

"What's your status? Where are you?"

Dameon tried to think through his shock, rage, and lingering depression.

"I'm in Ronto. In Vault 1."

"Vault 1?" Bixby was mystified.

"There are hundreds of Raptors outside, and tanks and. . .." Dameon trailed off, "I'm at the mainframe, what do I do?"

"What's there? What can you see?" Bixby's voice ringed with anticipation.

"Hold on."

Dameon limped into the room, using his old rifle as a crutch.