» Thu May 03, 2012 3:15 am 
Ch2
I woke up on my 19th birthday with Amata standing over me with a gun in my face. Hysterically she said.
“Your father left the Vault somehow, and without him around you have to love me! If you don’t have six with me right now I’m going to blow your brains out!” [censored] I hate this place. Thanks to a few years of training as a vault security officer her threat didn’t really faze me that much. Remembering my training I quickly knocked her legs out from under her caught the gun in the air and walked out of my room, after of course grabbing my trusty base ball bat.
Walking into the corridors I found that it was chaos everywhere, red lights were flashing, stupid alarms were going off, and there were radroaches everywhere. I holstered my pistol, drew my baseball bat and headed towards Butch’s room. I found him cowering outside the door surrounded by radroaches; of all the things in the world to be afraid of Butch had picked radroaches.
“Help me, help me, I hate radroaches!” I rushed over to him and began to systematically beat the radroaches with my bat. After they were dead Butch pulled me into a hug and said “thanks man, I would have been dead without you! I hope my Mom is ok, the last time I saw her she was getting a Nuka-cola martini from the kitchen. Can you go check on her for me please?” I nodded and told him to go into his room and lock the door.
As I walked along the Vault corridors I noticed a surprising number of dead of dead security officers, from whom I got more pistols and managed to scavenge some good armor. I walked past the kitchen to find Butch’s mom standing next to Andy, Andy is our Mr. Handy robot helper. Think floating white ball with a flame thrower and saw bade attachment and four eyes on metallic stalks. I assumed that she would be fine there; I decided that the best thing for me at this point was to leave the Vault and follow my father. I made my way to the Overseer’s office so I could open the Vault door; luckily as a security officer I had access to the codes. As I made my way towards the exit I was surprised at just how many people had been killed by radroaches. Right outside the door lay the bodies of six or seven security officers, who judging by the number of bullet floors had tried to shoot the extremely small target, instead of hitting them with their batons.
I walked towards the door when suddenly I was surrounded by my fellow officers who had their batons drawn and were glaring at me through their riot helmets. Out of the shadows stepped the Overseer himself. He looked unbelievably tired and worn down as if the crises was draining the life out of him, then again having Amata as a daughter will do that to you too.
“Your father has brought the wasteland into our home, so we will send you out to be with the wasteland, if you attempt to come back we will kill you!” I nodded, flipped him off and walked out the door of the Vault which closed with a resounding shriek of metal. I emerged into a short tunnel that looked like it had been a mine shaft at some point before it had been turned into the vault. I emerged onto a bluff that overlooked the sounding scenery, it was the first time that I had ever been outside in my life, and I wasn’t really impressed. Spread out before me was a land that that appeared to be made up of mostly the color brown, with little bits of grey here and there breaking up the monotony. Directly below was what appeared to at some point have been a small suburb, and over too my right was a large mettle structure that had several lights coming off it, I decided that that was the best place to head.
As I approached the large mettle structure I was greeted by a slightly humanoid robot whose name was apparently Deputy Weld he told me that in a highly modulated voice that this town was called Megaton and that it was the safest place in the wastes. When I entered the town I was approached by a tall black man in a cowboy duster and hat.
“Well looky here another new comer, names Lucas Simms and I’m the sheriff of this town.” He offered me his hand which I shook, his grip was strong, and his hands were weathered.
“Nice town you’ve got here sheriff. I’m new to the wastes; I just got out of a vault over to the north west of here. Do you know anywhere where I can learn how to survive out here?”
“Yeah, you should check with Moria she wrote a book about it, say you wouldn’t happen to know how to defuse a nuke would you?” I stared at him for a few seconds before seconds before saying.
“Well I love explosives so I might be able to do something, why do you ask?” he sighed and looked at his feet before saying.
“The idiots who originally settled this town built the entire thing around a live prewar nuke, hell some crazy [censored] even set up a church centered around the damn thing, and frankly I don’t trust them not to blow us all to hell, so could you disarm it please.” I nodded and told him I would see what I could do. I walked down the main path to the center of town where in a small pool of water I found a large metal bomb, scattered around it were a group of people who were praying hysterically for Atom to bless them with his gaze and for every eye to go blind before his glory, I could see why Simms was nervous.
I covertly levered off the access panel and much to my surprise I found that the inside of a nuke is a lot simpler than most people imagine. There were two switches and one bar, one switch had three labels which said off, active, and activate the switch was currently set on active, I quickly switched it to the off position before looking at the other switch. The label on the other switch said, in order to decommission bomb push switch down and pull on bar until it comes off of bomb, this is highly explosive plutonium inside a safe sheaf, keep away from small children. This was easier than I thought was humanly possible, plus how often do you just come across plutonium. Luckily my Pipboy has a space for things like this fully lead coated and fairly resistant to explosions and bullets.
I quickly replaced the cover on the bomb’s control panel and strolled upwards towards Simms whistling to myself while I went. He fixed me with a grin as and asked.
“So did you do it?” I nodded and said.
“Anytime sir, no charge.” When I said that his grin got a little bigger and we shook hands again.
“A good days work, no charge, and we no longer face nuclear annihilation, for all of that I ought to make you an official citizen of Megaton.” He handed me a pair of keys and said “these go to that house on the balcony that you walked by on your way in, feel free to ask Moria to sell you things to spruce up the place.”
“Thank you sir I will, um could you point me to this Moria’s place please” after obtaining the location of Moria’s shop I set off at a light walk, absorbing the sights. The entire town seemed to have been cobbled together from old prewar airplanes and airplane a hangar, in front of the now harmless bomb was a small restaurant whose’ food brought mouthwatering aroma’s to my nose. I continued past this and took a right, walked up some steps, and walked into the Craterside Supply.
Behind the counter stood a middle-aged serious looking woman with red hair and brown eyes, she was wearing an odd looking red rob that had a little symbol involving gears and a sword on it.
“So you’re our new arrival, and the one who I can thank for disarming our bomb, well I’m Moria Brown and this is the Craterside Supply, what can I do for you?”
“I need two things, first I’ve been told that you have a book that will help me live out here in the wastes, and second I need to know if the names James Hardgrave means anything to you?” at the mention of my father’s name the smile slid off her face and I could tell by the way that her lips grew thin that he wasn’t welcome here.
“Well as to your first question I do in-fact have just such a book, the first copy is always free…” As she said it she reached under the counter and brought up a pristine looking book whose cover was adorned with the words, The Wasteland Survival Guide, your best bet to survive, thrive, and revive. Written by Moria Brown, and coauthored and researched by ThreeDog. “… As to your second question, what does that name mean to you?” I sighed; it looked like this was going to go downhill.
“Unfortunately my name happens to be Zachary Hardgrave.” Instead of getting thrown out on the spot I saw her eyes soften and she reached across the counter to pat me on the shoulder comfortingly.
“Well” she sighed “it’s not your fault that you are related to that man, what do you want to know about him?” I was surprised by empathetic she sounded.
“Well I would kind of like to know where he is right now; I need to thank him if for nothing else then for at least getting me out of the Vault.” Her face was sympathetic and as she said.
“Sorry, I don’t know where he is now, he was here but he left soon after. You may want to head up to the Gob’s bar and look for Colin Moriarty he’s your Father’s friend and probably knows where he went. To make it up to you, and to show you my thanks for finally decommissioning that thing I’m going to give you three things. The first is a suit of combat armor and a hunting rifle plus two hundred shots, the second is five hundred caps to help you not be poor as [censored], and the third and most valuable is this little card…” she slid a tiny metal card across the counter to me, it was inscribed with the same design as the one on her robe. “…that’s a Brotherhood of Steel friend ID marker, show it to any Brotherhood personnel and they will recognize you as an ally. The Brotherhood is the extremely tall muscular people running around in white and grey powerarmor armed with energy weapons or big guns like missiles and miniguns. They don’t really like outsiders most of the time but that card should at least keep them from treating you as a tribal. A word of warning though if you find people matching that description but with armor that has been spray painted to be dark grey to black whatever you do don’t show them that card.” I departed with a wave after quickly changing into my new armor in a dressing room in the back of the shop, as I left she had a troubled look on her face.
I walked into Gob’s Saloon and immediately stopped and stared standing behind the counter was and honest to god zombie! His skin was a sickly brown and was kind of flakey and he was wearing what looked like leather armor. I reached behind my back to grab my new rifle when suddenly I was hit on the back of the head by a young woman who I had missed when I came in.
“I really hop that you are new to the wastes smoothskin, otherwise you and I are going to be doing some talking!” the zombie told me in a gravelly voice “considering that you look like you just saw a zombie I’m going to bet that you are new to the wastes so I won’t have to teach you about what happens to people who reach for their guns around me. I’m a ghoul, that means I’ve been alive longer than almost anyone here, and I can kick your ass with my foot faster than you could draw and shoot that rifle. So unless I throw my hands over my head and growl at you DON’T SHOOT ME! Any ghoul who does growl at you though is free game, [censored] mindless zombies.” I nodded, still trying to make sense of what I had just seen and heard then I said.
“I’m sorry sir I just crawled out of a vault and had never seen a ghoul before, please forgive me for not thinking.” He nodded and made a whatever hand sign “you wouldn’t happen to know where I can find Colin Moriarty?” the Ghoul chuckled and pointed me to a man in the back of the bar.
“That good for nothing drunk is a waiter here he’s on his break. I’m Gob by the way and I’m sorry we got off to on the wrong foot, being a Ghoul means being tough, those who aren’t die fast.” With that job taken care of I walked back to the man who had messy blonde hair and mustache. He looked up from his drink with a drunken grin on his face and said in an Irish
“Well would ya looki here, James’s boy finally got in I’ve been waiting for you for two whole days, you sure took your time getting here that’s for sure! So I bet you want to know where your daddy went, well to bad I’m not telling you until you do something for me!” at that he broke down in drunken laughter. I sighed I didn’t have time for this [censored].
“What do you want me to do?” I asked him he started laughing again and in a pathetic voice he whined.
“I want you to kill my ex wife and then take all of her fifty bottle caps, that’ll show that [censored]!” I slowly brought my hand up to my face and held it there before I said.
“Could I just give you fifty of my bottle caps?” he perked up immediately.
“You’d do that for me, why forget about that [censored] just give me your money!” I counted out fifty of the bottle caps that Moria had given me and placed them in my hand in front of his face and said.
“You can have them, but only once you tell me where my dad was heading.” He looked at them fixatedly like a drug addict at his last fix, and then realized that this metaphor was way too close to reality.
“He was headed for GNR Studios to talk to ThreeDog, that’s where I would look if I were you, now about those caps.” I dropped them onto the table in front of him and started to walk out of the bar, only then realizing that I had no idea where GNR Studios was or who ThreeDog is. I turned around and asked him and he replied in the same whiny voice.
“That’s another fifty caps.” I looked over to Gob who had been watching silently and looked for his approval, he nodded, which I took for a sign to do anything but kill him. I walked up to Colin and drove my knee hard into his crotch as he leaned forward in pain I uppercuted him on his way down and sent him crashing to the floor. I put my boot on his wrist to pry his hand open and leaned down to recollect my caps. I then walked over to the counter and told Gob
“Sorry about the mess, do I owe you anything?” Gob let out a great hacking laugh that went on for quite awhile when he finally got his breath back he said.
“Me charge you for a show like that? Hell you ought to be charging me for that here let me show you how to get to GNR.” He placed a marker on my map Pipboy map and told me the best route to get there; he also showed me how to listen to my Pipboy radio so as not to attract attention with a small headset hidden in it that I had somehow never noticed before. As I thanked him again I began to leave suddenly I heard a gunshot from behind me, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. I turned to find Colin lying there behind me a large hole in his head and a knife grasped in his dead hand, Gob blew on the barrel of his magnum and saluted me, I nodded my thanks again and stepped out into the sun
