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Absent Are the Saints	By : VirusVescichetta Category: +A through F > Fallout (Series) > Fallout (Series) Views: 8230 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: If I owned Fallout...I dunno. Shit would be different. The point is, I don't. And college students don't make money, so that's out the window, too.

Chapter List
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The brightness of the light outside was immediately and painfully blinding. To eyes used to artificial lights and grey metal walls, the sun was simply overwhelming. With my eyes blinded shut I was hit by all the other sensations of the Wastes that much harder. Oppressive, suffocating heat soaked into my clothes and skin, instantly making even my scant jumpsuit nigh unbearable. With my first real breath I was assailed by the smell of dust and burnt rock. I coughed a couple times before I got used to the feeling of unbelievably dry air filling my throat and lungs.
I had to blink several times before my vision was clear enough to actually see more than ten feet in front of me, and even then I had to squint. In the distance I saw a large mass of metal that looked vaguely like some of the buildings I'd seen in Pre-War books in the Vault and quickly deduced that it was the town that had been described in the Overseer's computer.
I hopped down the short cliff to the ground below and found it covered in asphalt, again something I was only aware of from surviving Pre-War texts. I figured that if I was lucky the road would lead to the town, or at least close enough for me to find my own way, so I started off along the cracked and broken path.

"...The main job I was assigned was Pip-Boy programmer, though I also did a lot of basic maintenance and helped my father out around the clinic," I continued explaining to the bright-eyed woman before me. "Performed my first unassisted surgery when I was eighteen, actually."
"You were allowed to perform surgeries?" Moira sounded surprised, but delighted. Everything seemed to delight her, though. She seemed much too happy and energetic for a woman in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
"Not officially," I admitted with a somewhat sheepish grin. Maybe her good mood was infectious. "It was only a minor surgery. I had to reattach someone's finger after a maintenance accident. Nothing life-threatening, but certainly a test."
She quickly scribbled down some notes while I sipped at a glass of mostly radiation-free water she had given me. I had stumbled into this town – Megaton, as I had learned it was called – and was quickly approached by a man named Lucas Simms. Apparently he was the town's self-appointed sheriff and he felt it was his duty to make sure he talked to most people who came through his town. It seemed terribly unfair, then, that he had missed my father, though he did direct me to a couple places around town where I could learn more.
Knowing that I wasn't going to learn anything immediately, I decided to find somewhere to get some food or drink. I was unprepared, however, for the bitter, metallic taste in the water I had found from a working tap. It also made me feel instantly sick to my stomach and stung painfully at the small cracks forming in the dried skin of my lips. A warning beep and the clicking of an automated Geiger counter in my Pip-Boy told me that the water was highly irradiated, and I swore at myself for not expecting that beforehand.
My search for food had led me to a small shop called Craterside Supply and to the chipper young woman before me, Moira Brown. She immediately recognized the large "101" on the back of my jumpsuit and bombarded me with questions about life in the Vault. For the trouble she gave me another jumpsuit, though this one was covered in a patchwork of armour plates. I scratched idly at the somewhat beat up metal on my chest as we spoke.
"So you mostly did work with computers and basic repairs, but your father taught you medical skills as well?" it seemed a redundant question, but I understood her wanting to be as clear as possible with all the facts.
"Yeah, that's right. Everyone was assigned a job when they turned sixteen based on an aptitude test we were given. Dunno why my dad taught me anything about medicine, though. I guess he just figured I had a knack for it or something."
"Those skills will probably come in handy out in the Wasteland. Most people can't fix themselves when they get hurt, much less other people," Moira smiled in her bright and cheery manner. I would later learn that the sudden surprised, almost confused expression was a sign for me to either leave or prepare myself for something entirely horrible and unpleasant. At the time, however, I simply took it at face value and assumed she'd just had an idea. "Hey! You could help me do some research on a book I'm planning to write!" she smacked the counter in front of me and I held no shame in the fact that I visibly jumped.
"How could I help you with a book?" I asked.
"It's a guide for surviving out in the Wasteland. Since you're going to be out and adventuring, anyway, you could help me by doing some field work," she seemed so positively delighted by the whole idea I found it hard to think of a reason to say no.
"I guess if it'll help people survive out there...but I'm kind of a novice with that, myself," my voice sounded sufficiently unsure, but it didn't damper her mood in the slightest.
"Nonsense. The skills you learned in the Vault have already put you ahead of the average Wastelander, and while you're working on the book you're sure to improve them. So what do you say?"
Looking into those bright, hopeful eyes and seeing how sure she was that what she was asking of me could really help save lives, I found I couldn't refuse. "Alright. Once I've asked around town about my dad I'll help you get started on it," I nodded with a light smile.
"Oh, aren't you just the best!" she looked about ready to run around the counter and hug me. A small part of me didn't find the idea terribly unappealing. "If you want to ask around town about your dad, though, you should probably talk to Colin Moriarty, up at the saloon." She scowled slightly at the man. "Personally, I don't much like the man, but he always seems to know what's going on in town."
"I might just do that," I said and set down my now empty bottle. "Thanks for the water, Moira. It was significantly less painful than what I had our a tap earlier."
"Never a problem," she replied cheerfully. "Come back whenever you have some time to spare and we can start on our book."
I nodded and gave a quick wave as I stepped out the door. My eyes still weren't used to the light from the true sun and I had to squint to keep the light from being too painful. The open air still burned at my throat and filled my mouth with the taste of dust. A rather disheartening thought occurred to me that it would take a long time to get used to life outside of the place I used to call home.
Moriarty's Saloon was at least an easy place to find, considering the huge sign hanging over the doorway to the building. Still, it took me several minutes to navigate my way around the rickety metal catwalks and walkways hanging around the city.
The first sight I was greeted with upon opening the door was the man behind the counter. At least, I assumed it was a man. His skin looked like burnt, dry leather, stretched tightly around little more than bones. His hair looked tattered and ragged and his eyes were sunken and dark. I barely suppressed the urge to jump when he spoke. "Got a problem, smooth-skin?" his voice was hoarse and gravelly and carried a distinctly annoyed tone.
"Uh...not immediately," I answered hesitantly. "If it isn't beyond rude, though, mind if I ask what's um...wrong with you?"
He looked more surprised than anything else. "What, you've never seen a ghoul before?"
"No, actually," I walked slowly over to stand at the counter. "See, I just came from that Vault over there," I gestured over my shoulder "so I don't know much of anything about, well, anything."
"Oh. I didn't know there was even anyone in there," he admitted with a shrug. "Well, I'm a ghoul. Name's Gob."
"Okay, Gob. So...what exactly uh...happened?" I was unsure of how to phrase the question.
To my surprise, he chuckled, a rough and raspy sound. "Radiation happened. You get enough of it without dying, you turn into a ghoul. Your hair falls out, your skin flakes off, and you sound like you smoke a carton of cigarettes a day," he said before a scowl came across his face. "And just cuz you look like a corpse everyone figures they should just treat you like one."
"That hardly seems right," I frowned. "I mean, you didn't choose to get irradiated like that, and it doesn't seem like you're any different from any other person."
This time when he chuckled, a large grin stayed on his face. It made it look like the skin was going to tear apart under the strain, but I held back any signs of how much it unsettled me. The Wasteland was definitely going to take some getting used to.
"Yeah, well, some people can't tell a normal ghoul apart from a feral, I guess. Or maybe they just don't care to," he shrugged.
"Feral?"
"Some of the ghouls who change don't take it too well," he stated blandly. "They go nuts or something, I don't know. Whatever happens to them, they end up attacking anything that isn't another ghoul. I think that most people see one of them and just assume that all ghouls are like that."
"Gob, if you're chatting instead o' working, I'll take the rod to you!" a thick voice called out from behind the ghoul. It carried a heavy accent I couldn't for the life of me place. A middle-aged man walked out of a room at the back of the building, sporting greying messy hair and an equally grey goatee. His look turned from angry to genuinely shocked when he caught sight of me. "Well, fuck me sideways. It's you! The young suckling babe with nary a tit to suckle."
I stared at him with a somewhat dumb expression. "Should I know you?" I asked. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the ghoul resumed cleaning something behind the bar, clearly trying to make himself as unobservable as possible.
"At the age you were when we last saw each other, I should say not," he laughed. "Last I saw you, you were on your way to that fancy Vault with dear ol' dad. And there was me, Colin Moriarty, giving you two shelter from the world until you did your best to hide from it."
"You must have me mistaken for someone else. I was born in Vault 101," I tried to correct him.
"Is that what James told you?" Moriarty laughed again and shook his head. The fact that he had used my father's name made my throat tighten uncomfortably at the possibility that maybe - just maybe - he was telling the truth. "Oh, the lies we tell to those we love. No, ya weren't born in that hole. You were born up here, just like the rest of us scum o' the Earth."
"There's no way my dad would lie to me about something like that," I said despite the unsettling feeling worming its way into my gut. "Look, I was told that if anyone in this town knew anything about him, it'd be you."
"Oh, aye, I saw him not too long ago," the man nodded. "Stopped in here, grabbed a few things and was off just as quick as he showed up. I was downright offended he didn't want to stay and catch up."
I sighed in relief at the possibility that I might actually get somewhere so easily. "Do you know where he went?"
"Interested in followin' in daddy's footsteps, eh?" Moriarty smirked at me and crossed his arms. "Yeah, I know where he went. And for a hundred caps I'll even tell you."
"Caps?" I asked.
He laughed aloud now, a decidedly cruel sound. "I suppose you don't know how the world works, do you? Caps, my dear boy, are what we use for money here. You know, bottle caps, like the kind off those bottles of cola and the like."
"Well, clearly I don't have any of those," I folded my arms across my chest, effectively mirroring him.
"Well, clearly you aren't gonna learn where your daddy's gone from me, then, until you get some," Moriarty shrugged unconcernedly. "Sorry to say, boy, but that's how it works. Information is a commodity, just like anything else, and commodities cost money." His eyes lit up as a thought suddenly struck him. "How about this: you go take out some thieving bitch named Silver who owes me a mess of caps, and I'll think about telling you what I know."
"Take out?" I gave him a confused look. "Wait, you want me to kill her?" I asked as his intent dawned on me.
Moriarty looked at me like it was obvious. "How else do you expect to get the caps out of her? She's a junkie and a whore; who gives a fuck if she dies?" He spoke with such coldness and disregard for her life I was actually stunned into silence. "Look, you want to find your dad, right? Well this is the best chance you have at finding him. Are you really gonna lose too much sleep if one more little bitch gets swallowed up by the wastes?"
I left the saloon with the information that Silver was in one of the small houses in the ruined town just outside Megaton. I had no intention of killing her; if I could talk the caps out of her, I would. At the very least I had to try.
It was strange, walking out of Megaton followed by nothing but the sound of the giant metal gate to the city grinding shut. A quick glance at the clock on my Pip-Boy told me it was mid-afternoon. Part of me instinctively knew that I should be able to tell that from where the sun was in the sky, but considering I had never seen the sun before it was somewhat difficult to instantly know.
The trip down to the ruined town seemed shorter than it had when I had gone to Megaton from the Vault. The sun burned at my skin less and a gentle breeze kept some of the heat away from me. It also kicked up an unfortunate amount of dust and dirt, but I figured I should probably take the good with the bad.
Finding Silver's house wasn't difficult. After all, it was the only place in the entire town that wasn't either a skeleton of foundation or boarded up. I opened the door and gave it a quick knock as I poked my head inside. "Hell-oh wow," I started when I caught sight of the woman inside. Or, more specifically, the makeshift syringe planted in her arm. It looked like something made from a needle, an extra canister and some thin tubing all held together by tape.
"Who the fuck are you?" Silver screamed and stood up from the chair she was in. She was dressed in nothing but a dirty tank-top and what looked like loose leather pants. The syringe clattered to the table beside her, but I could tell by her eyes that she was already under the effects of whatever drug she had injected herself with.
"I'm here on behalf of Colin Moriarty," I spoke slowly and evenly. Working in a clinic had given me just enough experience with people high off various drugs to know to be cautious. "He seems to believe you have a number of his caps."
"That fucking snake. He couldn't even bother to come out here himself," she snarled. "You go back and you tell him to go to Hell."
"How about you give me the caps, and then I go back and tell him you've been dealt with?" I countered. "He and I get our money and you get your freedom. Everybody wins."
"Fuck you!" she shouted and reached for a revolver sitting on the table.
I would later think that I probably should have just shot her, considering I could have drawn my ten millimetre handgun before she had her own pistol trained on me, but I was still looking to resolve this without anyone dying. In that mindset I just charged and tackled her to the ground. We tumbled over the chair behind her and I ended up in the unenviable position of lying beneath her. She scrambled to her knees and moved to plant her revolver against my skull. I grabbed her wrist and pulled it to the side.
The shot was deafening and my left my ears ringing. My free hand reached to my waist and pulled out the baton I had stolen from Vault security during my escape. I didn't even bother extending it before I slammed it into the side of her head. The blow stunned her and knocked her off, though it also jerked her hand and another shot let out its thunderous report. The adrenaline and the noise tripped something in me. All rational thought left my mind and I reverted to pure instinct.
The black flash of the baton flicked through the air again. And again. And again. My mind didn't register what I was doing until the splash of blood on my face snapped me back to coherence. I stared down at the corpse below me, her once attractive face a broken and bleeding mess. Even in my haze I had known to strike for the side of her head, and it was her temple and cheek that had suffered the worst of the damage. She lay unmoving and lifeless as a pool of blood slowly leaked onto the dirty floor around her head.
"Oh, God..." I dropped the baton as though it was suddenly white-hot and scrambled back until I hit a wall. I held a hand to my mouth as I fought to keep my stomach from emptying itself. The burn of bile in the back of my throat became overwhelming. The metallic smell of blood surrounded and consumed me and I suddenly realized the hand pressed to my face was covered in it. The only thing that kept me from vomiting was the overriding thought that it would be a waste of my body's moisture and nutrients and I could no longer afford that luxury.
"This is your fault!" I screamed at the corpse. "If you hadn't reached for your gun..." I was breathing heavily; desperately. "I wanted to work things out. I didn't want to..." it made it all the more terrifying to try and put it into words.
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. It was done. She was dead. Now I just had to grab the caps and I could get out of the foul place. It reeked of death and blood.
Clumsy hands roved over her, searching for something. I didn't know what any amount of caps would be kept in. After all, it wasn't as though a couple hundred bottle-caps would fit in a wallet or a change purse. After figuring out that she didn't have them on her person, I set about looking around the house. Within less than a minute my search had yielded a small bag that sounded like a metallic shower when it moved. A quick look inside confirmed my hopes. It was filled with caps from all manner of bottles. Some were whole and circular, others bent or twisted, but they were all definitely caps and I hoped against hope that they would be what I needed.
I paused and looked once more at Silver's bloodied corpse. I distantly realized that the horrible sick feeling in my gut wasn't as bad as when I had killed Steve Mack in the Vault. It had been less than five minutes and already it was all but gone. I wondered if the next time I had to kill someone if it would even be there.
I shook my head and a new feeling of shame and regret planted itself firmly inside me. This was a human life that I had taken, and I was thinking about how much easier it would be the next time. I didn't want there to be a next time. I just wanted to find my dad and...
I abruptly realized I had no idea what would come after finding dad. It wasn't like they'd take us back in at Vault 101. But then he knew that, too. He was the smartest man I'd ever known. He must have had a plan, I decided, and when I found him I'd help him with it, just like I always had.

A/N: It occurs to me that a nineteen year old fresh out of an isolated Vault probably wouldn't be very good at surviving the initial days in the Wasteland. This and the next couple chapters are going to attempt to get across the idea that when he starts out the Lone Wanderer really is a naive kid just looking for his dad and he'll either have to do whatever it takes to survive or get swallowed up by the wastes. Clearly it's a foregone conclusion for which happens, but it's about the journey, not the destination. And this journey is going to end up getting as dark as I can make it, because the world of Fallout is not a bright and shiny one.
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Absent Are the Saints