Tibbets in Arizona

I had managed to escape the ambush the remaining Enclave warriors had in store for us.

It took me some time, during which I sank into a deep mourning and depression, to reach my surviving friends. They had been loaded into the train and taken to an ancient prison in Arizona. There they would be tortured and forced to confess the structure of the resistance.

I alone remained of the resistance now. I didn't know it at the time, but our story was far from finished. Those dark days were a blur of renewed loneliness and the kind of madness that can only grip a Deathclaw stripped of dignity and friendships.

I wandered alone in the desert until I reached the edges of the known Mojave.

Thirst and infection from my wounds almost drove me into a feral insanity I might have never recovered from.

I couldn't even remember the days leading up to those weeks. Looking back I remember Carrie as a mirage. She led me or my senses did. Or both.

I knew somewhere Cobalt couldn't be broken. What pain can possibly shake a god? Only his people's suffering had bothered him.

Charles Rose was dead. So was Coffee. Those hideous Enclave had even shot the bird.

I thought at the time that they had killed Carrie also. Well past her time, of course. But never-the-less I recall thinking she had fallen after all. But she wasn't at Tibbets. Her story...well I will get back to her later...

I reached Tibbets and stood drooling, naked in the desert staring at its gnarled remains.

Cobalt's howls of defiance raged in sound all the way to where I now stood.

An Enclave with his helmit off stood smoking outside with me walking silently up to him,. The setting sun laid my shadow upon him.

For a second he was Charles Rose.

"Goris. It is alright. You have lost loved ones before, you know better than to give up." Charles Rose told me. He smiled boyishly and winked.

Then with a gutteral snarl I swatted the Enclave soldier across the sand. He did several cartwheels and blood made Moulin Rouge. His cry echoed in my ears and startled several crows.

"Hail good food indeed!" They cried out in unison.

I lifted my head back and roared silencing the desert and the spawn of Coffee.

"Goris. You must collect yourself or they will kill you." Carrie stood nearby. She spoke softly. The Ghoul Maiden was right. As an animal I was no match for the guards.

"What shall I do?" I let the blood lust seep out of my pores.

"Goris!" It was Xarn now. "You forget so much. Don't let the desert take what it has given."

"I miss you." I panted. My old wound ached terribly but couldn't numb the loss of my people.

"We are all here now. Soon you will join us if you have lost your wisdom old write and warrior." Gruthar spoke next.

"Father..." I then collapsed. Several lasers passed through me. Enclave stood on me, around me and over me.

"Get a picture." One chuckled.

"Dude it killed private Harris..." Another objected.

"Shoot it in the head it's still breathing." A third voted.

"No. Tie it. Drag it inside. This is the one we were told about." The voice. It wasn't an Enclave Officer speaking. No it was. But another reinerated the same thought.

A Setite.

What were those demons doing here? What?

I then slipped into the coma I dreamed in for several more days. Weeks. After I awoke I was not in the Southwest Commonwealth anymore...

The darkest chapter had yet to begin...

The Rez: Ghoul Maiden
Carrie's eyes flickered open like dull clams. Her head felt like a sponge full of nitroglicerine. With one stiff hand she felt around her contoured face for her weird eye and forced it back into the socket.

After sitting up with effort she looked around at the carnage. Coffee was dead. She reached for her atomic pistol, checked to see if it was loaded. Charles Rose lay dead among half a dozen Enclave. The Garrison had been abandoned after the Vertibird extracted the remaining soldiers.

Where was Goris? Cobalt? Were they dead as well?

With effort the Ghoul Maiden climbed to her feet and wandered the smokey battlefield. The scent of death went largely unnoticed by her nasal cavity on her face. One of many senses lost to ghoulification. Not lost. She considered. Dulled

She stared back at the ragged child in the entrance of the Alamo-like Garrison.

"You from the Rez?" The little orphan asked.

"Beat it brat." Carrie coughed and something fleshy and transparent oozed out of her mouth and dripped.

"Rez ghouls are meaner than you."

"You don't know me." Carrie lifted her atomic pistol at the smooth skin brat.

"You won't shoot me." The kid forcasted.

"Your not worth the ammo." Carrie's deep grating ghoul voice rasped defiantly. The annoying child ran off to play or harrass someone having a worse day, presumably.

Carrie shuffled out into Rail Town where her gunslinger walk drew eyes and attention she didn't want but couldn't really care less about.

"Get you out of our town." A fat bearded man with a double barrel sawed off aimed at her ordered.

"I am getting." Carrie glared expressionlessly and aimed her weapon at him in return as she walked past.

Eventually she reached the outskirts of Rail Town and continued onward to the Rez. At least that was somewhere to start from. She doubted she would be recognized alone. The gaurds were more concerned about the feather-headress wearing chieftain Cobalt and that darned Deathclaw.

Carrie walked alone through the desert considering morbidly that she was very far from New York.

"New York...New York...Everyone is leaving New York..." She sang in a grating Ghoul Maiden voice.

Above her in the skies were dozens of corvin creatures that reminded her of Coffee. They sang to her as well the chorus:

"The lights out there are much brighter. Forget all your worries forget all your fears. The bomb is yesterday. Today is the light!" They sang like dark feathered angels.

"And EVERY body...Every BODY is leeeeeeeving NEW YORK!" Carrie concluded the song with her arms raised like Queen Victoria.

"La la La la..." The crows sang like an echoing choir.

"Who goes there?" A sitting desert madman asked.

Carrie stopped and whipped out her atomic pistol. He sat calmly meditating. Familiar looking.

"Yage?" She asked blinking in the brilliant sunlight.

"It is I. I have prayed to be reunited with the crusaders of the spirits." Yage had somehow become more sane since the last time she had met him.

"Well it is...unbelievably cool to see you." Carrie breathed. she holstered her weapon and poked him with one bony ghoul finger.

"I am not a mirage, Ghoul Maiden." He assured her.

"Never said you were." She muttered. She sat and they built a fire for the chill of evening was seeping into their bones.

"I am over two hundred years old and still I am not as wise as you." Carrie complimented Yage's ability to survive the Mountain and arrive here alone.

"I am not as wise as I seem. It is my faith that guides me." Yage nodded.

"Then come with me. I could use some of that." Carrie bit into an Iguana Bit she had made earlier. She offered some to Yage but he declined.

"I am fasting."

"Of course." Carrie gnawed dispondently.

"We go there tommorrow?" He asked.

Carrie glanced to the lights of the Rez. "Yes. We will find something or someone useful there. They are ghouls like me, after all..."

The Rez: Epilogue
The Ghoul Maiden stood alone watching the distant lights through the telescope as dusk fell.
They were still rebuilding. They just kept on digging, erecting and piling on. And the lights were proof of this activity.
Decades had passed since NCR had fallen against the Southwest Commonwealth. Caesar's Legions had been the nails and New Vegas the coffin. Brotherhood, Enclave and Calculator all falling together in an unholy trinity. The children of the darkest decade of the darkest age were man and machine.
Men had become savages and machines had replaced them. Digging man's graves one handful at a time.
Filthy metal vultures.
But men had not lost all their old ways. They still worshipped the Twin Mothers. And legends were still being told in the Mojave Desert of the Silver Devil. A creature with many names.
They said it was a demon. A demi god. A ghost.
The Silver Devil was called Yammon, Gorik, Morlock and Hades by the scattered smoothskin tribes. Many legends were kept in firelit camps surrounded by dreadful desert creatures of night. The Blackfoot had the oldest legend.
Once the Silver Devil was like a man. It spoke and reasoned and adventured. It had a soul.
Then the dark ones, the Enclave, came in their evil birds. They killed all who were kin of the Silver Devil and finnally they took its very soul. Now it wandered the lands like a scourge.
The Rez Ghouls, Carrie's warriors nowadays, they claimed a more accurate approach.
The Silver Devil was some kind of ghoulified Death Claw. Infected with a unique strain of FEV.
Carrie knew better.
She remembered New York.
In all of its shadows. All of the death. All of the horror.
She remembered the love of her life. All of her loves and lovers. Moments of love.
Such a long and terrible, wonderful life. Everything gone. Except an empty desert filled with fear.
All shadows...
....all gone now.
"I will always love you Goris...my brother...my friend." She said quietly. The desert night air crackled with the slow rise of an electric storm. Crickets went to bed and cochroaches replaced them in the nightly seronade.
Carrie hummed and old song.
One sang to her in her time of loss.
Somewhere out there was the Silver Devil. Once Goris the Scholar. Now a feral animal. A mad creature that deserved to be called a Death Claw.
"Goris..." Carrie remembered.
.
the end

Well, this fan fic has been truly awesomely epic. And thats all I have to say. It's nothing less than awesomely epic. Well done.

What he said. Well done on a brilliant fanfic!

Hear hear, I was actually sad when it ended because I miss hearing about the characters....and I very rarely care about characters in anyone's writing,.