The final blow struck the Colonel, the razor sharpe claws cut through the thick power armour. As the Colonels body dropped to the floor all colour ran out of his face, his insides spread on the floor and blood splattered the walls.
The giant beast turned and began to make his way out of the base, as he did others began to follow him.

They where deathclaws; killing machines, huge mutated lizards, subjected to a Forced Evolutionary Virus designed to turn soliders into supersoldiers. This specific strain was a later version that did not cause the break down of the brain to mush, it infact even made the very basic lizards more intellegent and granted them basic speech. The one who had killed the Colonel was Thik-Talk known as this by the other death claws due to his much greater progress of thought and speech; by the Enclave he was No. 63, a possitive test result...
He led the pack; almost 6 meters tall, a tail of similar length trailed behind him. The lizard also had the obveous signs of the Forced Evolution Virus, the muscles on his upper and forearms had swelled making them totaly out of proportion, the teeth and claws had grown longer and sharper... Blood covered his almost entire body, entrails where hanging from his claws and a tatoe in white ink wrote 63. Benieth the thick blood he was a orange-brown colour.

The group had now grown to about ten or fifteen, they where walking down a central corridor, wounded deathclaws where helped along by some of the other beasts.
They where not at all identical, the FEV was known to be able to cause very different effects even if the same strain is used on the same species, it is as though each individual reacts differently to it.
A very significant sign of this individuality was the increadably large deathclaw on Thik-Talks left he was atleast a head taller than the rest and his claws where much longer.

They had now been walking for atleast ten minuits, they had travelled up atleast four sets of stairs and the corridor was growing in width and light levels as they rose.
As they neared the closer and closer to what Thik-Talk belived to be the entrance the dead bodies began to turn from Enclave soldiers into that of deathclaws.
Cries of worrie broke out between the deathclaws as they saw the deathclaw bodies.

"Our women and our kildren?" One of the deathclaws shouted in a parrot like voice.
"Thik-Talk, you told us they would be safe if sent ahead..."

The leading members of the group went from a steady march to a sprint... Approaching faster and faster, into lighter and larger hall ways miniguns and laser rifles could be heard... Screams both human and inhuman...

"Help... Our children..." A female deathclaw completely cut in half pleaded from a room of the corridor, a dead adolesant death claw cradled in her arms... Their killer dismembered in the courner of the room.
"I could not save my child..." her voice failing towards the end of the sentance as she fell into the eternal sleep.

The blood on the floor, the mother must have been stuck by a hidign Soldier when she went to take shelter with her son in that room...
He took her by suprise and cut her clean in two, the adolesant deathclaw probably went to kill his mothers attacker and was instantly killed...
The blood on the floor... She crawled with just her arms... All the way to the soldier, he had probably gone back to cowering in the courner...
She had crawled all the way accross the room and ripped him to pieces for what he had done to her son...

Fury filled Thik-Talk, he felt himself running yet faster towards the sound of the fight, the over sized beast on his left chasing and his heels.
Closer and closer they drew and the hallway grew into a large hall, possibly an assembly point incase of emergancy... Dead soldiers bodys littered the floor, atleast fifty, all half geared up...
Six very large male deathclaw corpses could be seen towards the end of the room, next to a door frame which was soaked in blood... It looked asthough the focus of the conflict had been on that door.

I sent them through the essembly point,
Where are the other four males?
Maybe they yet live and continue to fight...

As the group moved towards the door a group of heavily armoured Enclave soldiers appeared at the main entrace to the hall on the opposite side they had entered.
The large deathclaw accelerated like a bullet diving onto the front two, gripping and crushing their heads with each claw. A very large crack was heard and then a shell shot through the large beasts chest, ripping through the otherside.
The beast let out a loud scream but continued to rip into the group of Enclave troops.

"Good luk my brother, if we survive we shall come back for you..." Although the deathclaws understood the basics of first aid their large claws prohibited them from using stimpacks and thus they where no use to their wounded.
The group rounded the blood stained door and continued on. It was not long before they found the rest of the male advlts, they had died fighting in the door way, it seemed they had been stopping soldiers following the group of females and children up the hallway.
The females had been given seperate FEV strains so they evolved to be fast breeders and to lay more eggs and thus where not as good at fighting as the males.

Finally they caught up with the group of females and children, combat instincts took over Thik-Talk and everything became a blur... They seemed to be in some sort of dead end and the females where trying to hold the enclave troops out of several differnt rooms containing the children, the group had arrived behind the enclave soldiers who where attempting to erradicate the colonies entire population of females and children.
The Enclave where wiped out quickly as they where struck from behind by the entire remains of now almost veteran male advlt deathclaws, however not a single female advlt or child had survived...

That night seventeen deathclaws left the Enclave base...
Their hatchery had been incinerated by Enclave soldiers with flamethrowers.
All of thier female advlts had died trying to protect their young and even with this sacrifice only four of the infant deathclaws had survived, all of which where male.

Even the less intellegent deathclaws understood what that meant for thier colony.
That was one of the only things they knew as they entered out into the darkness of the world, they walked out into the cold and unforgiving enviroment of Postwar Siberia.
In the distance they could hear strange howling and a strong wind whipped at them sapping their strength.

After about four hours of walking the wounded refused to continue walking as they where slowing the colony down. In the light of the situation this, for them to allow themselves to die for the greater good of the colony seemed, pointless as without females they where sure to die out anyway.
However in hard time the deathclaws had to pull together for the protection of the colony, even if that meant letting the weak die. Thik-Talk mourned the loss of the giant deathclaw for many days after he had to leave him in the snow... As effective leader of the colony it should have been him to charge the group of soldiers that turned the giant warrior into swis cheese.

After a long walk the colony finally reached a settlement by the sea; the deathclaws did not understand that all humans where not a like...
Over night the entire town was massacred, some in their beds, some as they got up to protect their children...
Not a single deathclaw died, that night they slept in warmth and comfort for the first time in thier entire lives,
For the first night in thier entire lives they did not get brainwashed whilst they slept,
For the first time in thier entire lives they dreamt freely... and for the first time in Thik-Talks entire life he realised not all humans where evil...