** I was in a bit of a hurry writing this - the story was unraveling in my brain a lot faster than I could bang it out on my keyboard. Even though I edited it half a dozen times before posting it here, I still wasn't happy with it and found errors. It needed a lot more fleshing out as well so that's what I've done today. Also removing any fallout 3 specific references as I may actually want to use this in the future. I always wanted to write a doomsday type story and this would fit perfectly inside of that. Kind of like the novel "A horse and his boy" by C.S. Lewis which takes place insde the novel "The lion, the witch and the wardrobe" by the same author, both part of the "Chronicles of Narnia" series which I read and reread as a kid.


1


I peered over the ridge cautiously, not wanting to get my fool head blown off by one of those damn renegade roving robots or worse. I saw something flickering in the distance, light, probably firelight. I could hear muffled noises. The camp was some distance off but the sound carried easily uphill in the clear night air. The chances of it being friendly were remote but I hadn't had a decent meal in days and I'd run out of coffee the day before yesterday. A man can go without a regular meal, live on roots, berries, bugs a rat here and there, hell, damn near anything. Going without coffee however, was damned uncivilized. I ran a hand over my three day stubble and licked my lips at the thought of a friendly camp, a cup of steaming hot strong black coffee and a chance for a hot meal. No one in this godforsaken wasteland would refuse a man a cup of coffee ? provided they were human and not renegades, raiders or worse. There were plenty of people out here just like me trying to scratch out some sort of meager existence in this ravaged wilderness. Other scavengers, bounty hunters, nomads, refugees, escaped slaves and even those that made their homes out here somewhere, somehow, simply called wastelanders.


I should've turned around right then and there. I suppose my lack of coffee and my diet of late ? jerked rat and tubers was affecting my better judgement. I started down the talus and shale covered slope. The moonless night and cloud cover provided little in the way of light to see but I was accustomed to it and my eyes saw fairly well as long as there was some light. The fire, as far off as it was, altered that ability however slightly making the area immediately around me dim and blurry. I felt the loose rock under my boots but failed to realize just how much of it there was and how unstable. It gave way under me suddenly upending me, landing me on my back and knocking the breath from my lungs. I was out of control and sliding down the slope rapidly, the sharp edges of the shale cutting through the light leather I wore over my clothing to protect me from the occasional fall and rough snag. It did little to protect me from an avalanche of debris, of which I was now the primary component. My outstretched legs I managed to keep ahead of me were the one single thing I had going for me. I worked my knees desperately, trying to slow my descent with my boot heels.


Through the cloud of dust I could make out the dark outline of the tree line I was rapidly approaching. My boot heels hooked a large root sticking up at that moment. It was too fast. I felt a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as my knees snapped back viciously and I was launched straight up and forward with great velocity. I saw the dark of the tree a split second before the explosion went off inside my skull. An earthquake vibrated along my spine sending a shockwave of intense pain along every nerve path in my body. My vision swirled to a pinpoint of fading light and I felt myself falling for what seemed like an eternity. I lay there, shock consuming me, numbing the pain as my consciousness left me. In those last moments before darkness consumed me I heard something terrible. A desperate, horrific scream wrenched forth as from a soul tortured in the darkest depths of hell, choked off suddenly before it could finish. That scream burned through me searing my very soul as the last pinpoint of light faded from my pain wracked brain.


The gray light of dawn permeated my consciousness as I swam slowly back to the land of the living. I gasped and shivered in the cold air and winced against the pain that was everywhere in me. My head was throbbing and my back felt as if I'd been whipped with a steel pipe. I had to get moving, get the blood circulating. I pushed myself to my feet with some amount of difficulty, my knees aching from the snap back they'd experienced coming up against the root. I took a couple of shaky steps, feeling better, it wasn't as bad as I'd first thought, a little walking and I'd feel better. I'd been a lot worse off than this in the past, at least I hadn't been shot and nothing had found me as I lay helpless. The thought chilled me and brought me fully alert and awake with sudden clarity as I remembered the camp and that terribly scream in the last moments before darkness had consumed me the night before. There was more to it, I remembered as I walked over to retrieve my rifle which had been thrown a short distance from me when I came up against the tree.


The scream had been female, young from the sound of it ? a girl or maybe a young woman. It had been followed by guffaws of rough laughter, muties by the sound of it. I remembered how the scream had choked itself off and hoped for the girl's sake that she'd taken her last breath. It was a hell of a way to feel about someone that had probably saved my life but it was far better for her to be dead than to continue to be a plaything for those terribly creatures. Had they not been busy torturing that poor girl they surely would've heard me crashing down the slope like a drunken fool and come to investigate. Then I would've been the one screaming out my dying breath as they did god knows what to me for their fun and amusemant. I'd come across the remains of those who had been their captives, it wasn't pretty. I shivered and blocked the images from my mind. I had to assess my situation, whether alone out here or not, gather my gear, and get moving.


First things first, I drew both pistols and worked the actions, checked them for debris and damage, reloaded them, then reholstered both. I carried twin walsh .40 calibers, they each carried twelve shots each which I much preferred to the many six shooters carried by many out here in the wasteland. They were strapped to the outsides of my thighs, tied down low and tight for sure, smooth quick draws when the situation required it. I was a cross draw type, preferring to drop either hand across my body to draw from the leg opposite so my pistol grips faced forward instead of towards the rear for the typical draw. Men said I was fast. All I knew about that was I was still alive in a harsh land that suffered neither the weak nor the foolish. I didn't go looking for trouble but I didn't back away from it either. I sure as hell took no water nor backed sand for any man. I guess I'd been lucky enough to not meet anyone faster thus far. I stayed on the proper side of the law which kept the bounty hunters and sheriffs away, my reputation kept the rest of them at bay for the most part. There was always the occasional tinhorn, thinking themselves a gunslick that came hunting me now and again, trying to bolster their reputation. I buried them all. I hadn't asked for this, I simply wanted to survive.


I had always been good with a gun, some of that came naturally and some was upbringing. My father would count the cartridges out and send me off hunting when I was just a boy. For every cartridge I had to bring something back or I'd get a whipping. Not missing was something I learned very quickly.


Raiders had caught my father in the fields one day while I was away hunting. He'd never had a chance. They ransacked our place and then set it afire. I was in a good mood that day, having bagged a monster gobbler. I couldn't wait to show my father the eight inch beard on what I estimated to be a ten pound or so bird after I'd dressed it out. I was fourteen years old that year. I smelled the smoke before I saw it, breaking into a run I topped the rise before our spread and saw only smoking rubble. They must've hit it shortly after I left at dawn. I found my father in the western field, his gun half drawn and unfired. He was fairly riddled with bullet holes. Our stock lay about all dead, one of the beef missing it's hind quarters, roughly sawed off. They'd slaughtered the cattle and small livestock for their amusemant, carrying off just enough to last them a few days until they did this to someone else. I vowed they'd never get the chance.


I found myself unable to cry. I tried but the tears wouldn't come. A rage smoldered within me, a rage like nothing I'd felt before, blinding me, consuming every part of my soul. I wanted nothing more than to go charging after them, to make them pay. My father had told me never to fight angry, it made a man reckless and careless. Right then I didn't much care if I lived or died as long as I took every man jack of them with me when I went. I looked around at the smoldering ruins of my life. There was nothing left for me here anymore, I would bury my father and then go after the raiders.


I finished near dusk, said a prayer over the grave and went down to the creek to wash up. Then I went to the ruins of the crib where we'd stored our corn. The floorboards in the center were charred but not burned clear through. I pried several of them up and lifted the strongbox out from underneath it's hiding spot. Inside were my father's navy issue walsh colts, a fair amount of ammo for them and for my rifle, and a couple of hunting knives. I took the guns and as much ammo as I could carry then replaced the box, carefully moving the charred timbers back into place over the hiding spot. If I lived, I might need more of the ammunition later.


I knew I should rest and go after them in the morning but it just wasn't in me to wait. Fearless of any pursuit, the raiders had left a trail a blind drunk could follow. There was no moon out that night and that was just the way I wanted it. The sky was clear and the stars shone brightly down on the trail they'd left ? broken twigs, footprints left in soft ground without a care, a dropped whisky bottle. They'd soon come to regret their carelessness.


I tracked them until midnight. I came across a likely spot for a camp and settled in for a few hours of sleep. I was starting to think a little more rationally. I didn't know how many there were but I needed to even the odds somehow. I needed to be well rested and formulate a plan. I slept fitfully and woke long before dawn. I figured around 4 a.m. I ate some jerked meat and had a couple swallows of water from my canteen. I had been dreaming. Our ranch stood quiet and peaceful in my dream and then the minions of hell had descended on it. In my dream I was bound somehow, unable to move, unable to do anything but watch as my father was shot to death and our farm burned to the ground. The dream changed rapidly as dreams do. I was standing over my father's corpse, worms were crawling out of the body and filled the sockets that used to contain eyes. I awoke shaking and sickened, then the rage took me again. I gave myself to it fully, setting out with a quick, sure step. I would send them all to hell today. I walked for three hours before I heard the shot's. I had been tracking the group west, Fred Whitley's place was to the southwest a bit just over a rise a half mile or so distant and nestled away in a small valley. It was from this direction I heard the shots.


I chuckled then. If they'd gone after ol' Fred they'd sure bitten off more than they could chew. Dad had fought with Fred in the commonwealth skirmishes before I was born. He said Fred was hell on wheels in any kind of fight and I believed it. Fred was a mountain of a man standing 6'4" tall and weighing every bit of 280 pounds, not a single ounce of it fat. I'd seen him shoot the wick off a lit candle at 400 yards without taking more than a fraction of a second to aim with that old spencer rifle of his. I'd never seen him wear pistols nor draw but dad said he was deadlier than a rattlesnake with them. He'd hung them up years ago when he'd met his wife Beth and settled down for the life of farmer. They'd never had children and I knew it pained Beth some. We tried to get over to see them a couple of times a year and she always had cookies baked and doted over me like I was her own son. My own mother had died of the sickness when I was still very young. I barely remembered her.


I'd broken into a good paced trot, not wanting to come upon them out of breath but wanting to get there in time to help. I could smell the smoke now and I was concerned for the Whitley's. If they'd taken them unaware like they had my dad there's no telling what the situation was. I heard the boom of Fred's spencer but I didn't know if it was him firing it or Beth. Might have even been the raiders had gotten ahold of it and were shooting him with his own gun. Be just like the spiteful bastards. I doubted it though. I imagined it would take a whole lot of killin' to get Fred Whitley to roll over and take his last breath.


I'd cut thru the woods directly south and was coming down the other side of the mountain now. The road that led to Fred's place was down below me almost at the base of the mountain that I half skidded and half ran down. I couldn't see the house yet but I saw the tips of flame and huge billowing clouds of gray smoke rising into the air. The raiders must've fired the barn. I heard one more shot and a strangled cry as I launched myself into the middle of the road. I could see the house clearly now 500 yards off, one raider lay dead not far from the front door. My eyes roved back and forth across the field in front of Fred's place. Another draqed over a hay wagon, one by the watering trough. Where were the others? Were there only three of them? The path leading to the Whitley's went straight and level for 100 more feet then dipped down into the valley before leveling off again. I heard the pounding of feet and stepped back into the brush on the other side of the road.


Three heads came into view ahead of me, two of them supporting a third who'd been shot in the leg. So, there had been six of them. Six to one. The thought of it fired the rage in me and sent something ice cold down my spine. A harshness gripped me as I thought of the cowardice of it all. I slipped the thongs off both colts and waited. When they were a mere 10 feet from me I stepped boldly and quickly out to the center of the path blocking them. My guns were still holstered, and my hands hovered over them fingers spread wide. My heart was thudding heavily in my chest and the blood pounded in my ears. Every nerve in me was jangling. The men supporting the wounded man both carried rifles in their free hands, the wounded man still clung to a pistol. I'll give them this, they didn't waste any time on words. Both stepped away from the wounded man and three guns swung level on me simultaneously. I saw a crimson stain spreading across the right one's chest, the center one's face disappeared in a wash of blood and I felt the guns bucking in my hands. I hadn't remembered drawing. Two were dead and the third was down on his knees choking out his dying breath. Blood oozed and bubbled from his throat where one of my bullets had gone and it made a strange gurgling sound as he gasped for breath that would not come.


I stared down feeling the senselessness of it all. Why hadn't they just left us alone? Why did men feel they had to survive on the hard work of others? Why couldn't they simply work themselves and leave others alone. I sighed. It was a harsh land and there would always be the lazy and weak of spirit that would take the easy way out. There would always be those that would prey on others simply because they could. There would always be those that would take and destroy while others tried to rebuild this shattered land. That's what my father had told me anyway.


I would come back later for the guns and ammo these jackals carried, right now I wanted to get to the Whitley's to see if Fred or Beth were wounded and needed care. I came up the path cautiously, my rifle high in the air in my right hand, my left hand out and away from my gun butt. I didn't want Fred shooting me by accident.
"FRED, BETH!", I called out, my voice sounding strange and hoarse to me.
"Brent?", a question called out by Fred.
"Yah, it's me Fred", I managed. My voice was all squeaky, shaky and hoarse from the recent events and the adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
"Beth, it's Buck's boy, Brent", I heard him tell his wife Beth.
"Well, don't just stand there you old fool", I heard her reply, "tell him to come on in and sit a spell."


The door swung wide and I saw Fred looming in the doorway, his rifle held in his left hand, the right side of his shirt soaked in blood from the shoulder down. Blood still oozed from a bullet hole in that shoulder while Beth was admonished him for not holding still while she tried to stop the blood flow. I'd wondered about that leg shot raider. It wasn't like Fred to miss his mark at all, let alone a hog wild shot like that. Now I knew. He'd paid dearly for every shot he took. His face was stiff and white with the pain of the wound but his eyes glowed bright and showed the steel strength that was embedded in every part of him.


He took me in at a glance, noting the cold hollow in my eyes and my father's pistols strapped to my hips.
"You get the rest of them did you boy?", he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Yes sir." I replied, "Caught them up the path a bit with a wounded man."
He nodded saying nothing.
"Your Pa?"
"Dead," I replied.


Beth looked up then, sorrow in her eyes, and a bit of hope. I couldn't look back. I stared dumbly down at the floor not knowing what else to say and wishing I could just be out of there. Far away from here, from everything I knew, until it all faded away like a bad dream.


"I've got to go," I said, and turned to go.
"Hold on boy," I heard Fred say behind me.


He said something to his wife that I couldn't make out. The blood was pounding in my ears and emotions were welling up inside me. Emotions I didn't want to think about right now, couldn't deal with right now. I knew if I looked into Beth's eyes again I was going to start bawling like some damn baby so I just stood there hunched up and stiff with my back to the both of them. I could hear them whispering a bit, she was upset and wanted me to stay. I wasn't really paying attention to the rest of it, I wanted to be out of there. I wasn't thinking of anything but getting away, far away.


Fred was saying something to me, I tried to pay attention.
"? always set store by yer pa, he asked me once to look after you if anything ever happened to him, reckon he meant if you were a bit younger. Man grows up fast in this rough land. You take another man's life in a fair fight, I reckon you to be a man. I reckon you gave them raiders more break than they deserved and come out on the better side of it. That's good enough for me. You've got a place here with Beth and Me if you want it."
He knew my answer before I said it.
"No sir. Thank you."


I heard Beth start sobbing then and I couldn't take it anymore. I started out the door and I felt Fred thrusting a sack into my left hand. I smelled the raw bacon and bread I knew they couldn't spare but I took it numbly anyway and walked quickly back to the spot where I'd left the raiders.
"Good luck to you Brent", I heard him call after me. "If you ever need anything or a place to stay you're always welcome here."
Tears were welling up in my eyes now, blurring my vision, I didn't want him to see me wiping my face like some damn fool kid. I blinked and they rolled down my face, splashing on my rough, homespun jacket. I choked them back viciously and forced the memories from my mind.


That had been ten years ago and seemed like a lifetime. I'd shot a mouthy bounty hunter who'd made a move for his gun in a bar a month after that and my path was set. The sheriff of that town had met me at the gate as I hauled ass out of town. Said he'd heard it was a fair fight and that's why he wasn't arresting me. Told me I had a choice to make, I could let all that anger eat me up until there was nothing left or I could cut it loose and move on. Then he told me to get out and never return. For an instant I'd wanted to kill him as well. I'd looked into his cold steel gray eyes and knew that even if I outdrew him he'd still kill me. He reminded me of my father, who would get the same look sometimes staring off into the distance when he didn't think I was around to see him.


After that I'd avoided settlements for a good while, coming in only to trade as necessary, mainly for medical supplies and coffee. Everything else I needed I could find in the wilderness. I scavenged mostly and took the occasional bounty if I could get in and get out without undue risk to myself. I was no damn hero. Hero types didn't last long out here.


Besides my pistols and rifles I carried a couple of boot stilettos, a hunting knife and a throwing knife which I kept in a holster down my back where I could get to it easily by reaching around behind my neck. I killed a fair amount of small game with the boot stilettos. I'd gotten quite adept throwing them at moles, rats, squirrels and such. It saved on ammo, kept my location a secret and was good practice. It was also fun, something I knew little of out here in the wasteland.


I'd used the neck knife once to kill a crazy ghoul that had come out of nowhere near a sewer entrance one night knocking my rifle from my hands and me spinning. I remembered the fetid stench of it's half rotted body on top of me and the eerie light of madness shining from it's eyes. That knife was the only thing I could get a hold of and I was damn glad to have learned of that trick from a mercenary who came to my camp for some hot coffee and information one night several years ago. That thing had the strength of the damned and it was all I could do to force it away enough to get the knife between me and it's throat. I remember the stink of it's warm blood spraying over me ? burning me where it touched my flesh. I shuddered with the memory. Disgusting creatures, they'd been human once but no longer. Living too close to the hot zones, eating and drinking contaminated food and water had transformed them into something unrecognizable and no longer capable of rational thought. Like the vampire from legend, they had an insatiable craving for human flesh and blood. Thankfully, they hated any form of light and stuck to the dark of the sewers.


The cold air was waking me and walking was working the stiffness and soreness out of me a bit, although I groused about not having any coffee for the third day. That was putting me in a worse mood than my wounds. Hell, I'd been hurt before but I took great pains not to run out of coffee.


I thought about how I'd come to be in this situation as I scanned the area for any signs of life, working my way closer to where I thought the camp had been the previous night. I was pretty sure whomever had been there had moved on by now as I'd not heard a sound in the hour or so since I'd been awake. The sun was peeking out from over the eastern mountain range now, the chill in the air starting to fade. It would be another inferno of a hot summer day soon enough.


I'd come out further west than I'd ever been before looking for an abandoned town that had recently been home to some refugees now run off or dead. I'd heard about it from a trader I met a couple of weeks ago. He hadn't actually seen the place but knew where it was having heard the story from a wastelander out here. Apparently some fool refugees had tried to take up residence there and wound up on the wrong side of some pissed off robots. I figured to get their first and find whatever they'd left behind of value. Neither the trader nor the wasteland dweller wanted any part of the 'bots. Bots could be the end of you out here ? especially the military ones set to patrol the various gun and missle depots during the war. There was some abandoned facility or depot nearby and those things were all over the place. The refugees or whatever they were must've found the place when the bots were in their maintenance cycle. When the mechanicals came back out on patrol, those folks never had a chance. I'd dealt with mechanicals before and I hated those things. Some of them were pretty damned fast and heavily armored. I avoided them at all costs if possible. Oh, I'd snipe one from a ridge if I could during the daylight but you didn't want to start messing with them at night when you couldn't see. Their sensors were a lot more adept than your eyes and I'd yet to find any night vision gear intact. I figured to go take a look at least and see if I could figure a safe way to get to the town fairly safely or see if I could figure a way to distract or disable the 'bots while I made my way into the place


That had been a week ago. I'd gotten to the general area and spotted the ramshackle cluster of shacks from a few miles off. It was nested up against the bottom of a sheer cliff rising some 200 feet into the air in the center of a small valley. It was a rotten place for a town. The soil wasn't worth a [censored], all sandy and gritty, full of small pebbles and grit. It was more desert than arable land. Some light scrub and ground cover was trying to grow but for the most part it was a barren place. The facility with the bots was some distance off to the south up one side of the valley and a good 1000 yards from the collection of shacks. I couldn't bring myself to call half a dozen shacks and a couple of lean to's a town.


On the north side the ground sloped up gently and disappeared over a rise. A wash ran up the center and straight to that "town". The bots reached the outer limit of their patrol about 600 yards from the wash. If I was careful, I shouldn't have too much trouble getting to the place. I didn't know how much area they scanned, I didn't want to take any chances, God only knew how many of them or what types were up there.


I'd sat there mulling it over and finally figured the best thing to do was to sneak up that wash around noon on my hands and knees. It was summer and the heat danced off the sandy soil in waves during the day. That same heat played havoc with the 'bots sensors. They were a lot deadlier in the cool of night. If I went slow enough I should avoid their motion sensors, they would be completely blind in their infra red spectrum. Some brainiac had built real time vision into the brain models shortly before the war. It wasn't "true" vision in the way we think of vision ? rather, it was simply a set of logic rules and instructions in it's processor. It constantly took several seconds of real time video in it's scanning area and then compared this to a recorded image of the same area scanned moments before. If it found a discrepancy, it would run the whatever it found ? a rat, a piece of debris, anything ? through a database filter of known objects to identify any potential threats. Needless to say, a human body would constitute a state of "high alert" and put the damn things into combat mode. Then it and the others would come a running. They might be in patrol, defend and warn mode but unfortunately, most of them were locked into "seek and destroy" protocol. I think too long without any human intervention to their interfaces had futzed up their programming matrix but what did I know ? I was no tech head. I could fix my guns and patch myself up fairly decently and that was good enough for me. Anyway, the real time vision was what worried me the most.


I'd have to time their passes and then attempt to scrabble up the wash fast enough to avoid a real time scan but slow enough not to set off the long range motion sensors. It was a real pickle. I didn't like it one bit but I'd been sitting there thinking about all the stuff that could be up there in those shacks. There were some overhangs on either side of the wash that would make it easier and give me a place to take a breather as I worked my way westward towards the town. I would stay to the south side up against the bank as much as possible, alert for any sound that might indicate the bots had spotted me.


I wish I had time to wait for another maintenance cycle but that could be days or even weeks from now. That trader could've blabbed the location of this place to half a dozen people now to sweeten the deals he made. I couldn't afford to wait. Maintenance cycles occurred during regular intervals depending on what the "master" brain thought was necessary. Usually all the bots were recalled at the same time and put into their pods for cleaning, lubricating and charge up. This was supposed to happen when their human masters were around to watch the place while they were down for maintenance. There hadn't been any of those for a very long time so the central processing unit ? the "brain" simply kept to the maintenance schedule it had originally been programmed with. Most of the 'bots had been originally designed simply to save money on human guards at night, on weekends, holidays and such. It could be weeks or even months before another cycle occurred. Thank God for fusion batteries, I thought, rather sardonically.


Too bad the refugees hadn't taken the time to scout the area properly before deciding to call it home. They'd probably been weary from whatever travel and ordeal they'd been through and simply thought to do it later. Like I said before, this land suffers neither the foolish nor the careless. No matter what the situation, they were dead and whatever they'd been carrying was likely still up there, hopefully, some of it would fetch a decent coin with some trader either out here in the wastes or at a settlement. I aimed to find out, the thought of enough to take a few days rest at an inn, eat a hot meal I didn't have to cook myself and get a hot bath appealed to me greatly. I needed a vacation from the sweltering hell hole that the wastelands were in the summer and I was damn well not going to let some rust bucket robots keep me from my booty.


It's thinking like that that'll get a man killed out here. One should learn to be happy just to be alive from day to day and rejoice at some small meal of squirrel or rat and some clean water to drink. I didn't know it but the [censored] was about to hit the proverbial fan and I was standing squarely face first on the wrong side of that fan.


I started up that wash the next day at noon just like I'd planned. I was bunched up against the side closest to the facility on the south side hoping the low bank of the wash would obscure me somewhat for parts of my trip. I could've never made it if I'd had to do the entire thing in one run/crawl. Hell, it was a good 600 meters from my position to where the shacks were located. I'd gone about 200 feet, having passed the first open area and gotten to the first sandy overhang of the wash when I heard a metallic "click" and then the whirring of servos. It was loud as hell in the still, quiet air of the afternoon. I felt the blood drain from my face as every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up and my nerves were set for whatever lightning move would be required of me to survive. The sound had come from almost above me! I didn't even want to turn my head to look up. I didn't hear the smart alecky comments of those DOD mechanicals that flew around on their fusion jets taunting you before they attacked. I hadn't seen any when I'd scouted the place and my route. What else could it be?


The air above me crackled and burned with a sudden eruption of 960nm laser fire. Brain fire! Then the staccato of automatic weapons fire erupted from the side opposite the 'bot assaulting my senses with the sound of their fury. Bullets whipped and thudded around me and into the thing which was obviously directly above me firing at something that was firing at it. I swore viciously and scrabbled forwards away from the gunfire. I sure as hell hoped whatever was shooting at the brain was friendly as I was going to be in plain sight of them in another second but that was highly unlikely. There were generally only two things cocky or stupid enough to brashly take on a fortified robot complex head on, raiders or mercs. I didn't care much for the thought of either. I rolled over onto my back and brought my rifle across my body, pointed in the general direction of the gunfire while I continued to push myself forward with my knees and legs. Damn them! They were going to bring the rest of the bots this way while I was exposed to a very nice crossfire. Nice for them anyway, not so nice for me.


I came into their sight and two of them saw me at the same time I saw them ? raiders! They must've come across either the trader or the wastelander and one of the two had probably attempted to trade the information for their life. There was no trading with raiders though. They were always jacked up on some chem or stim. It left them with little rational thought. Whomever had given them the information was surely dead now. It was just like raiders to bull their way into a situation that could just as easily get them all killed as not.


I could see a man with a Mohawk firing some sort of automatic weapon, an assault rifle by the looks of it, at the brain. There was a girl off to his left, both of them at a slight angle down from me. It was no big stretch to nudge my rifle up a tad and shoot him thru the brisket as he was swinging the barrel of that AR over my way. He staggered back a step but didn't go down. I held my breath then slowly let it out as I gently squeezed the trigger and put one thru his throat. She was cursing and screaming and drawing back the choke on that shotgun for another reckless shot at me. I'd heard stories of "witches" growing up. All she needed was a pointy hat to complete the image. Her first shot had gone hog wild. Her second hit the ledge opposite me spewing sand, dirt and grit into my face. I fired several times blindly in her direction and heard a muffled choke and gagging sound. I must've gotten her in the lungs. The crazy [censored] wasn't shooting at me anymore, and that's all I cared about at that exact moment. There was yelling and cursing from behind those two and I could hear mechanical whirring above me and up the slope towards the 'bot facility. If there was ever a dead man out here ? it was me. They were firing at each other but I didn't think the other raiders further back had realized it wasn't the bots that did their mates in. I had to do something and fast!


Ahead of me another twenty feet was the largest overhang in the entire wash. I scrabbled towards it as fast as I could go on my back, praying the other raiders didn't see me. It was a miracle I hadn't been hit yet and I didn't expect my luck to hold out forever. I got to the shelf and caved the sand and brush over me. I was now buried in the sandy soil up to my neck. I'd managed a half upright position so I could see what was going on. I hoped the root underbrush hanging down around my face was enough to obscure me. I'm sure I was dirty enough to cast no discoloration against the sandy brownish backround of the bank.


Salty sweat was burning my eyes making it difficult to keep them open. Four more raiders came into view, one's head blossomed in a bloody explosion as I looked on in fascinated horror. Another took a laser right to the chest over his heart. He fell to his knees the light fading from his eyes before his face hit the ground. The other two had enough and turned tail to run. I heard a howl of anguish and figured one more of them was at least a step closer to taking a dirtnap. That left a slip of a girl I'd glimpsed dressed only in shorts and a dirty tank top that had probably been white once long ago. She had a bandoleer of cartridges hanging from shoulder to hip across her chest and carried only a rifle. She wasn't all tattooed and crazy looking like the rest of them and I wondered about her.


She'd be dead soon enough more than likely. A brain and an upright bipedal mechanical were attempting to get up the other side of the wash to go after her. The brain model kept falling over and then the bipedal model would stop and come back to help right it. They weren't smart enough to do this on their own ? the master brain must still be in radio range of them. If they got out of range, they might never come back and simply go "renegade" nothing to give them directions anymore, they would roam aimlessly shooting anything that moved until their batteries went dead.
Watching that idiot brain falling over again and again was pretty funny and I wanted to laugh but any sound at all would've been the end up me. If the brain had been in radius scan mode instead of tracking mode which focused on his escaped quarry I'd already be dead. The two mechanicals finally had enough sand caved down the other side of the wash to make a makeshift ramp and up it they went. It sure took them long enough ? the girl might get away after all. She didn't look much like a raider and I wondered again about that. I rather hoped she made it.


I could hear the mechanical whirrings of the bots that were still close to the edge patrolling in a heightened state of alert. I was not in a good way. The sand was keeping me fairly cool but it was still hotter than a fresh thermopile out here and I didn't dare move. If the bots didn't stand down before nightfall when their thermals could detect me my goose was going to be thoroughly cooked.

good read, [censored]'s intense

Damn nice work. More please.

Good stuff.

Thanks. Dusting off my creativity before I get back to writing. You're all too kind as that first posting was terribly rough - I'm actually embarrassed about it somewhat.

I've rewritten the entire thing, scrapping large parts of it and fleshing it out quite a bit to give the character more backround. I should have some time to add to it over the next few days. I need to take some time to edit and rewrite some other stuff I've had on the back burner for quite a while.

thanks again.

*chants* Chapter two! chapter two!

Dunno why I didn't review this earlier... Looks pretty good. Heck, I'll even say it's excellant. It's good to see so many great fics here now, in a place that was, until recently, dominated by rps.

Thats true. Only a few months ago, this forum was littered with Rp's. It wasn't bad, it was fun.

On Topic

Nice story.

Hey, I'm doing my part...

(And this is a great story, as I said before.)

2


My thoughts jerked back to reality roughly as I caught movement out of the corner of my eye! There it was again! I froze in place barely breathing. Many things could easily be overlooked in the wild if they were still. There were more than a few occasions in my past where an adversary's slightest movement had been the difference between who continued to breathe and who didn't. I peered anxiously in the direction I'd seen the motion, a slither of darkness crossed an open section of ground near me, forward, and to my left about forty feet from my current position. I still couldn't make it out ? a shadowy form gliding stealthily across the ground where the morning sun swept downward at an angle through the trees I now stood amongst. I was looking directly at it the third time it passed and almost laughed out loud realizing finally what it was. Damn me for a tinhorn fool drifting off in thought like that out here. I looked up to see the creature casting the shadow that had spooked me. Just a damn buzzard, one of the few birds to survive the bombs and the radiation. One of God's many last laughs at those who would so callously destroy what he had created. Pests of all types had survived; including such nuisances as mosquitoes, flies, and gnats just to name a few while many of the precious creatures of beauty like the common songbird and the white tailed deer had ceased to exist.


As I looked up at the giant bird another arrived to join it circling the area above where I was sure the mutant camp had been from the previous evening. There was only one reason for them to be there and I had a pretty good idea what that was, although I was loathe to go into the camp and find out for sure. It had to be the girl who had let out that blood curdling scream the night before, the same one I'd been tracking for days ever since I'd escaped from the nightmare that shanty town had turned into. The same one that had been with the group of raiders at same said town. She must've seen me on her back trail at some point and walked herself into a nearby river a day and a half ago. Crafty, very crafty, I had to give her credit. Many a grown man out here wouldn't think of that simple trick to throw off a tracker. I knew better.


I grew up tracking all sorts of game, I didn't dare come back from a hunting expedition with nothing to show for it. Number one: I'd go to bed hungry, number two: I'd get to work all day in the fields until my father decided my punishment for my lack of diligence at tracking or my carelessness scaring off game was punishment enough before he'd allow me to go out after game again. This could last from several days to several weeks depending on the season. I hated field work and would much rather spend my days trekking through the forest near our farm hunting or fishing. Field work still had to be done of course, and I did a lot of it. Holding hard the reins of a plowing team, digging to plant and harvest root crops, and swinging wide a heavy sickle to cut hay for our stock had made me lean and strong. I didn't begrudge that time, without it, I surely would've perished long ago. I did however, relish every chance I got to take a break from it. I learned to track well and to move through the forest like a ghost making neither a sound nor leaving any mark of my passing.


I wore moccasins when I hunted that my father had shown me how to make from the skinned hides of various game in the forest. I could feel every twig as my foot came down, before I stepped on it and snapped it, scaring off potential meals.


That river had been too wide to cross with a swift current. She hadn't crossed it and I saw no tracks leading back out of it either. I had a fifty fifty chance, up river or down river. I'd been tracking her North and slightly East. The river crossed at a rough angle flowing mostly West but also drifting to the south. If she really wanted to go North then she would head up river a good bit until coming back out of it. If she didn't care and merely wanted to throw me off then she would head downriver to the West and South.
As far as I could see downriver the land stretched away in a series of low, rolling hills. These were scraggly and mostly barren, sporting the occasional sickly, lone tree here and there with some sagebrush and light ground cover but not much of anything else. Upriver wasn't a great deal different but the trees seemed to be slightly and I stress slightly denser. The land rose again in a series of slopes ending in a high ridge perhaps twelve miles distant.


I chose upriver. I'd gone over a mile with no sign of her exiting the river and began to think I'd chosen the wrong direction. I'd come upon a tumble of rubble that had splashed into the stream and piled themselves up the bank ending shortly on the flat scrub above. Several pieces of busted metal rod protruded through some of them. Apparently the remains of a structure long ago washed downriver as the bank had eroded away from underneath it. The river turned sharply North at the debris area. Something that surely aided in washing the bank out and the structure away during hard rains and high water.


I leaned against it resting, taking a swallow from my canteen and thinking about the walk back downriver, slightly disgusted with myself. My instincts were usually better than this. I turned back around one last time staring Northeast up the river looking for any sign she had exited the water before I made my way back the way I'd come. I saw nothing. I looked down in disgust. Suddenly, my eyes caught something, something that did not belong, something that was not right with the slab of rock just above the water line. A scuffmark! Fresh, too, I could tell by the way part of it came away easily when I rubbed it with my finger. So, she had come this way after all!


I carefully examined the rest of the rock and rubble left there but could find no other signs of her passing. Smart girl, coming out of that water on rock which would leave no trace of her passing. That bandoleer of cartridges had been awfully big on her and I imagined it was this, hanging lower still with her hunched up as she crawled out of the river that had drug against the rock and made that mark. An incredibly small error, one which would've been missed by even the best of trackers. I myself had seen it only by sheer luck. I cast about for tracks coming off of the rubble but could find none. She must have removed her shoes or boots or whatever she wore. I knelt carefully in the scrub and crab grass which grew there. There! The grass bent slightly, a broken blade, as if there had been some slight weight there.


I followed the scant trail into some juniper bushes a few hundred feet off to the north. On the other side, I found where she had sat and put her boots back on. The ground was hard and flat here. The sandy dirt to the south where the shanty town lay had given way to a darker, claylike soil. She had likely sat here a bit watching her back trail. It had taken me some time, casting about for sign to get this far and I doubted she'd seen me. In fact, she probably had quite a lead on me by now. Why I was following her in the first place I couldn't say. It was becoming apparent the girl was no tender foot. She could obviously take care of herself. Yet it was a mystery, and it perplexed me why she had been with the raiders in the first place. I'd spotted a group of them a ways off the second day I was trailing her. If she WAS a raider and wanted to rejoin them she'd surely missed a good opportunity to do exactly that.


The sun baked the reddish brown clay soil hard as a brick which left scant little track. Even my own weight left the barest trace of an indent. I had a hunch she would continue northward and continue to stay close to the river. It would be hell trying to track her on this flat hard ground and would slow me down greatly trying to. I picked up the pace and set my sights on the ridge some twelve or so miles distant.


I'd run out of coffee the day before and I was anxious to catch her, solve whatever mystery there was about her and those raiders so I could get on back to a settlement to trade what I'd found at the shanty town and get supplies. Thinking of that shanty town made me realize again just how lucky I was to be alive at all let alone off running this fool's errand tracking some silly girl.


I'd lain under that bank while the hot afternoon sun cooked the dirt and sand around me until I felt as if I was being baked alive. I needed a drink desperately but didn't dare move to get to my canteen. The sand and soil would've shifted making who knows how much noise, the closely patrolling bots would've made short work of me then. Around what I figured to be 6 p.m. or so I'd heard a muffled explosion from the direction of the facility. I had no idea what the noise was but I was sure grateful for it, if a little apprehensive. The bots took off back towards the place at a good clip and I'd made my way up to the cluster of shacks making up the "town". I planned to scour the place quickly and get the hell out of there before whatever had claimed the attention of the mechanicals ceased distracting them or worse, turned it's attention towards me.


I got to the buildings and dashed from shack to shack finding little of value. Oh I found a few things, some medical supplies, some food and clean water. A couple of old pistols and several half full boxes of ammunition for them. Strangely, there were no bodies or skeletons anywhere. I didn't stop to ponder about it, I was getting out of there while I could. I'd stretched my luck much further than I had any right to up to now and I was done with it all. I thought briefly about scavenging the busted mechanicals the raiders had shot up for parts of any value ? especially any fusion batteries that might be salvageable. I discarded the idea quickly. A couple of batteries and some scrap metal weren't worth my life.


I hadn't had any intention of going after the girl then but for some reason I subconsciously headed in her direction instead of back the way I'd come. I told myself it was for a chance to pick off the remaining two mechanicals at a distance for their salvage but deep down I knew better. My curiosity was going to be the death of me someday.


That had been a day and a half ago. I'd topped the distant ridge I'd seen from afar last night and got my head banged up for my trouble. Now I was going to end my foray into curiosity with a sight I was sure was better left unseen.

**hell of a place to leave with ya'll hanging on wanting to know what became of that girl, I know...

***grins gleefully***

** although I should've been completing other tasks today, I instead wrote some more of this - couldn't seem to do anything else. I know this stuff is probably far too mature for most viewers of this site and because of this I'm going to have to wrap it up soon. Thanks to those of you that appreciated it and took the time to say so.

3


I walked slowly in the direction the shadows from the buzzards were landing. I smelled stale ash and charred flesh. My stomach was churning sideways. I'd come upon people that had been burnt up before. Fires, flamethrowers, Molotov cocktails ? you name it, the sicko's out here would find some horrible way to do you in with fire. I saw her then, her arms and hands anyway, stretched behind her and bound around the trunk of one of the trees surrounding the small clearing where the muties had made camp.


Muties, full name ? mutants ? only they weren't really. The radiation had nothing to do with their appearance, their inhuman strength nor their massive size. Some genius had been manipulating genetic code before the war, attempting to make the perfect soldier. A footman which would have lower IQ thus more easily controlled. Highly loyal, indoctrinated to their mission, super strong with an unearthly tolerance towards injury and pain. That was the concept anyway. Without direction or orders they should've just mulled around whatever area they were left in until they starved to death or killed each other out of pure animosity. Something had changed. Someone had changed them, their behavior. Someone mucking around somewhere they shouldn't be - mucking around with something better damn well left alone.


Only in the past few years had we begun seeing them throughout the wasteland. Belligerent, hateful of anything else not them, reckless, destructive and virtually unstoppable. They hated humans and liked nothing better than to see one helpless, writhing in pain they inflicted on said victim died. I couldn't stand the thought of that girl dying horribly at their hands and I didn't know why. I'd seen people killed before. Men, women, children, of all ages and varieties. It always bothered me, I didn't like to see anything suffer needlessly or be killed senselessly but it was a harsh world we were all born into. A man had defined our survival long ago. Someone called "Darwin". My father spoke of such things from time to time. The strong prevail over the weak, he'd tell me. I can't say I like it and neither should you, that's just the way it is.


I was coming into the camp from behind the girl, or what was left of her. I didn't want to look but at the same time I couldn't help myself. One long, slender, well toned but dirty leg came into view and then the other, stretched out in front of her. I stopped then, when I saw the other leg and I felt myself go cold. A metal stake protruded from her right thigh, dead center rising a foot into the air where it met another metal rod with a cap which served to fit it over the first rod. The second rod angled down sharply extending two feet and ending in the pit where they'd made a fire. No wonder she had screamed like she had.


It was a favorite form of torture for the muties. Seems they didn't have a whole lot upstairs until it came to torture. Then they became masters. They'd drive a metal rod thru a man somewhere ? thru his leg, his forearm, seen it in a shoulder once and through the guts mostly. They'd hook another piece onto it and heat it up - a lot. The heat would crawl from one piece of metal to the other, as is the way of conduction. It would take a while but the piece they pierced the body with would get hot, very hot. It wouldn't get red hot or anything but it would be close in temperature. It was a pretty horrible way to go, getting cooked from the inside out. I couldn't even imagine how horrifyingly painful it must be to their victims. Searing hot pain which wouldn't end until you died, stabbing through you, sending lightning bolts of pure agony up your spine and into the pain center in your brain. I shuddered. I'd never seen it done to a woman before. Usually they died from the casual beating given to them by the muties. The mutants, not knowing their own brute strength, were just as likely to kill a person with a backhanded blow as not.


I'd seen the girl had taken her share of additional trauma, surviving that only to end up victim to the worst the mutants had to offer. My gaze tore itself from the metal stake with some difficulty and roved up her torso towards her face. Her stomach showed beneath her torn tank top, lean and well toned. Her skin was covered in dirt and abrasions everywhere but what could be seen was light in complexion, smooth and clear. I wondered at that. Most out here had more than their share of radiation induced mutations. Small cysts, moles, discolorations and other abnormalities. No one sported skin this healthy.


My gaze fell to her face. Delicate features, slight fine eyebrows, a delicate aquiline nose. Even swollen black and blue her lips could not belie their fullness and beauty. Dried blood ran from one side of her mouth, from her nose and even from her ears. The right side of her face was black and blue with the eye swollen completely shut. On the her left side the jaw sloped gently up to high cheekbones and then gave way to perfectly opal shaped eye sockets. Even beaten with her eyelids shut I could tell she'd been exotically beautiful before the muties had done a number on her. Her corn silk blonde hair fell gently across the good eye and swept backward towards a perfectly formed ear.


Her chest lifted gently then and I jumped back, startled. Jesus! She was still alive! Her one good eye fluttered open the pupil struggling to focus and failing. The lid fluttered again and then fell closed. Was she dead this time? I put a hand under her nose, no, I could feel a faint movement of air. I placed my hand on her forehead, she was burning up with fever. If I couldn't get the fever down she'd be dead soon enough.


She was too weak to use a stim on. It would probably kill her in this weakened, feverish state. If she was going to make it, it would be the old fashioned way, with care and time. I pried her mouth open and poured some water in from my canteen. I held her jaw shut and stroked her throat to induce a swallow. She was too weak for even that involuntary reflex. I didn't want to think about the metal stake through her leg. It had to come out and there was only one way to do it. The muties possessed the inhuman strength of half a dozen men. They'd likely simply sharpened an end and then rammed it on through her flesh and bone. I needed to excavate the ground first and find out how far through it had gone. That was the first step. I didn't care to think about the others.


I got a tin cup from my pack and poured some more water into that from my canteen. To this I added a pack of multispectrum biotic serum, granulated version. It was a field pack issued to military personnel just before the war. It contained a variety of powerful antibiotics, supporting vitamins, minerals and herbs to combat severe trauma and infection in the field. Using it was actually hard on a number of the bodies systems, especially the liver and kidneys. It was a worst case scenario kind of cure. You were going to be dead anyway if you didn't try something and this was it.


I poured the mixture into her mouth and helped her swallow again. I couldn't tell if she was conscious or not, her eyes remained closed throughout. Even if she had been conscious, she was surely delirious. That was blessing enough as had she been conscious she'd be in hellish agony.


I felt sick thinking about what those malformed bastards had done to her. The cold hard rage I felt now and again was rising inside me. I had within me an animal desire to tear asunder, to destroy and kill, to seek vengeance and retribution. I wanted to make them pay, the way I had made the raiders pay with their lives all those years ago. I wanted to make them suffer they way she had suffered. That was a ridiculous pipe dream. Mutants didn't feel pain the way we do. Their hindbrain had been genetically altered to register damage and after a time, to seek shelter from it if not contrary to their mission. They did not feel pain. The best I could hope for was to kill them.


Such thinking was selfish and counterproductive, it did nothing to aid in the girl's survival. I forced the rage back down to that dark place inside me. It would still be there when I needed it. I brushed the loose debris from the outside of her right leg and began to dig the dirt away with a flat, hand sized rock. The stake protruded only an inch or so from the skin on the other side and was very close to the outer edge of her leg. Her luck thus far had been pretty bad. This was a bit of the good kind, however small, for her and for me. The stake had obviously been deflected by her femur bone instead of shattering it and going on though. It stuck up nearly straight as her leg had shifted when it had passed through the flesh and muscle of her thigh making it appear as if it had gone through the bone.


It was likely had the muties hadn't realized this or they would've ripped it from her and attempted to pierce the bone again. A femur break was incredibly traumatic and painful. I wondered that the shock of it hadn't killed her when she showed herself to still be alive, now I knew why. The skin around the stake was burnt and cauterized as I'm sure was the tissue and muscle beneath the skin. It didn't matter, I had to get it out of there and the both of us out of here. The muties were gone but they might return. More than likely, they thought her dead and would not return but we were still out in the open and I could not adequately care for her and defend us both in this position. As precarious as her condition was, she would nonetheless have to be moved.

It's a shame to know you'll be ending it soon. But it was a good, short-ish story. I have enjoyed it so far.

Well mate, there doesn't seem to be much interest in fiction here besides a very limited few. Unless of course you kill 10 things in 10 seconds and your story consists of: I killed, I shot, I maimed, I threw a bomb, I ducked, I killed some more, etc. etc.

Seems to be a lot more interest in rp'ing which, while I don't engage in, I have nothing against. I do however, need to get my work out in front of people that are actually interested in reading it so that I can continue to evolve and improve and that is the primary reason I'll be wrapping it up.

I'll let you know where I land so that you may continue to peruse my ramblings if you so desire.

:)

- Jeff

Very, very good! I usually don't like fan-fic, but this is excellent. I like the memoir/journal feel of it, and sincerely hope the next part is better that the last, although this last part was very good!

Ah ah, someone has their eyeglasses on!

I did indeed rush the "last part" as you call it and failed to bother polishing it before posting. My time runs short.

I can't say when I will have time to finish it at this point, I can only promise that I will, as soon as I am able.

=\ its a shame if you dont continue it here =p
its shaping up really well
at first the flashbacks were disoreintating but once you catch up with the feel of the story it is great

I'd personally like to see a continuation. Or, failing that, something new. You're too good of a writer to stop. Do your duty, the forums need you!

I'll not be stopping my writing. I'm just going to stop writing here.

:)

As far as my publishing anything else for public consumption free of charge - that remains to be seen. I have to eat, ya know...