“Well, shit. Looks like the
crazy bastard finally blew himself up.”
Drew
had hoped to
find
something good when he came over
to Reginald’s
place. It
was an old ranch house that
stood in the middle of nowhere, surrounded
by forgotten fields.
Instead
of the old house, though, all he found was
a
hollowed-out decimated
property
that
looked like it had been destroyed
from the inside out.
It
begged the question: just what the hell had happened? Knowing
Reginald, he had found something that was
not
only unsafe,
but
he
hadn’t treated it with the respect it deserved. It was something
that Drew had warned
him about
repeatedly,
especially that
one
time when an old fusion core had fallen off a top shelf and slammed
into hard
the floor.
It
wouldn’t surprise Drew if something similar hadn’t happened here,
blowing
both him and his house to bits.
On
top of being careless, Reginald
was also
more
than a little nutty;
or
perhaps, rather, he had
been. There
was no sign that he had survived, but there was also
no
sign that he had died, either. As
to the cause?
Considering
the odd crackle from his Pipboy, Drew assumed that either
a
mini-nuke had gone off, or
a fusion core, as he had first suspected. Reg
had
had enough explosives stored away that one explosion could
easily
cause
a chain reaction resulting
in the
decimated building
he saw before him.
Whatever
had happened, the house was no more and
it
was likely
that
Reginald
was no more either. A
shame, as Drew had really liked him.
Searching
through the wreckage, it seemed almost everything had been wiped
out.
Well,
at least it seemed that way initially.
Out of the pile of rubble, Drew
noticed an armored hand. It almost looked like it was reaching out,
ready to grasp something. Moving in closer, he realized that it
wasn’t just any metal armored hand but appeared to belong to some
power armor.
Getting down on his hands and
knees, he began to excavate. If he was lucky, there was a full suit
of power armor hiding away beneath the rubble. Though judging by his
luck, it was most likely just an armpiece.
“Please
be a full suit,” he muttered to himself as he continued to dig.
It
wasn’t an
easy
excavation,
though
he
hadn’t really
expected
it to be.
Ten
minutes
in, and he had only managed to excavate
the heavily dented, pitted and
bloodied helmet
and down
to the
left
shoulder,
which
was twisted out of shape.
There
was also a foul rotting smell coming from the armor which suggested,
much to Drew’s chagrin, that there was
likely
a dead body inside.
By
the time he had uncovered the chest, he’d had to put on an old gas
mask from his backpack. While it lacked any filters, it did dull the
smell enough for him to continue. Though
with the smashed chest piece, it was clear that he had uncovered a
power-armored coffin.
While the armor itself was a
no-go, that didn’t mean that Drew was necessarily heading home
empty-handed. With the rear uncovered he was able to pull out the
fusion core, which was still warm to the touch. Usually, that meant
it still had juice in it, though regardless of whether it did, it
would still fetch a nice price.
With the core in his backpack,
he decided it was time to head back to town. The sun was getting
awfully low and he didn’t want to be out after nightfall.
It
took over two hours to get back to Colville,
an old-world town that was still mostly
standing.
It
wasn’t just the town that
had been spared the
horrors of
the wastes,
though, as
the
majority
of the county and those around it had been mostly untouched by the
Great War.
That
didn’t mean that everything had been
unaffected by
the Great War.
The
local wildlife for one thing had changed a lot, and it wasn’t due
to them mutating. Instead, critters from outside the area had roamed
in such as Yao-Guai, Dire Wolves, Radstags, and other such things,
and had replaced most of the existing wildlife.
Even
so, life was good up here and the local population had no idea just
how good they had it.
“Hey, Drew,” the gate guard
by the name of Lee greeted.
“Hey,” Drew said in
response.
A
long time ago, a wall had been built around the
center
of town. Along it was the occasional guard and turret, all looking
out for either predators or raiders, or the wayward haywire robot. It
had kept them safe so far, but it needed constant maintenance which
was a strain on what little resources they had available.
Lee gestured to his backpack.
“Find anything good out there?”
“Not much. I got a fusion
core and I found an old chess board with what looks like all the
pieces.”
“Oh, wow,” Lee said with a
grin. “How full is the core?”
“Had
a little heat in it, which means there’s some juice left, but
pulled it from a set of smashed power armor.”
“So likely almost empty,”
Lee surmised.
“Probably.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sure is. Catch you later.”
Drew
headed in through the gate and down the main street towards the
make-shift power station that had been built out of an old
substation. While the city did use fusion cores, its main source of
power was wind and from the nearby Colombia River, mainly using the
water flow from Kettle Falls. Neither produced a lot of power, but it
was enough and any extra went into recharging whatever cores they had
laying around.
“Sandra!”
Drew called out as he stepped inside the main building.
Carter, a guy in his early
twenties looked around from an old generator. “She’s upstairs.”
“In her office?”
“Like always.”
“Thanks,
kid,” Drew said as he made his way up.
As expected, Sandra was ready
for him. “Come on in.”
Drew pushed the door open and
stepped inside, taking off his backpack then reached inside.
“What have you got?” she
asked as she stood up and made her way around the front of the desk,
sitting on it.
“I got an old fusion core,”
he said, passing it to her.
She
took it and gave it a once over. “Looks to be in good shape.”
She walked over to a small machine with a slot in it and placed it
inside before stepping over to a terminal.
After a few moments, a smile
spread across her face.
“Good condition?” Drew
asked.
“Around ninety-five percent
integrity. Almost out of juice, but the thing is in great condition.
Will take loads of recharges before it starts to noticeably degrade.”
Drew rocked back on his heels,
pleased with his find. “You probably shouldn’t have told me
that,” he said with a mischievous smile.
Sandra smiled back at him.
“You’re good for it,” she said as she opened a wall safe and
pulled out a satchel of caps.
“Glad to be of service,”
Drew said, taking it from her.
“Glad
you thought of me,” she responded as she sat back down behind her
desk.
Drew
almost said: “I always think of you,” in return, but realized
that he would be sending off the wrong message. While she was
attractive and fun to hang around with,
he couldn’t even think about flirting with her. He still wasn’t
over Gemma, even though it had been a few years now since she and the
others had been taken by those monstrous Super
Mutants.
“I’m
heading
off
to go spend some of this at the bar,” Drew said as he turned to
leave.
“If you find any more fusion
cores, you know where to bring them,” she called after him as he
stepped out of her office.
“You
know it,” he called back before
closing the door behind him.
That
was a lie. The truth was that he kept most of the cores he found for
himself,
only selling the odd one. The
reason was because he
needed them, or rather he would need them in the near future. He
didn’t plan on staying in
Colville
forever and he believed
he had
found just the place to set up shop.
“She’ll be happy,” Carter
said as Drew reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Make your day a little
better, I assume?”
“She’s not bad to work
with, but yeah. Always nice to see her with a smile on her face.”
Drew
nodded as he opened the front door. “Catch you later, Carter.”
It
was a short walk from the power station to the bar. Most services,
stores, and recreational places were located on the main street that
ran through the heart of town. The moment Drew opened the bar
door, he was assaulted by the smell of cigarettes, alcohol, and food.
There
was also the noise from loud patrons who all talked and laughed and
whatever else. Compared to other places Drew had been in his
thirty-five years, Colville was by far the most lively
and
the most densely populated.
There
were well over a
thousand
people living there, and
yet it managed to support it without people going hungry. At
least too
hungry.
It
wasn’t perfect, society never was, not
even before the bombs fell, but it was stable.
Drew
stepped up to the bar where a friend, Amy, was standing
cleaning a glass.
“Hey,” she greeted with a
wan smile. “Find anything good out there?”
“Nothing
much,” he answered. “Just
a fusion core.”
Amy looked around before she
leaned forward, lowering her voice. “So, how is that place you
found?”
“If
you’re talking about the old Robco plant,
then I’ve only scoped the place out at a distance. There was at
least one
patrolling robot that I saw and I don’t know if it was hostile.
Haven’t
been back there in about a week. Might go tomorrow. We’ll see.”
“I
thought you had this big plan to move out there?” Amy
asked.
Drew shrugged. “It depends.
When I get the chance, I’ll be taking a proper look around.”
“Well,
let us know how you get on.”
“You
know I will,” Drew said, “Considering you and Jack want to come
along.”
“Yeah, we do,” Amy said
focusing back on the glass she was cleaning.
“Something
wrong?”
“No, I’m fine,” Amy said.
“You want a drink or something?”
“Sure,
the usual.”
“Coming right up.”
Drew watched as she grabbed a
clean glass and filled it using the old pumps. There were few places
left in the world that had drinks on tap, most resorting to just
handing out bottles of two-hundred-year-old-liquor.
“There you go,” Amy said,
passing it over.
“Thanks,” Drew said, taking
a sip. “Good stuff.”
“Yeah,
well, Kalvin is good at brewing beer. Got to be good at something, I
guess.”
Drew was about to ask what she
meant by that when they heard a commotion outside. It sounded like
panicked shouting, verging on screaming.
With his drink in hand, Drew
made his way to the door, along with several other people, and took a
look.
It was Jerry, a scavenger, and
he looked terrified, disheveled, and noticeably injured. His body was
shaky as he leaned forward holding his stomach.
“It…” he began, pointing
the way he had come. “I saw it…”
A town guard approached him.
“Come on, let’s get you to the doctor’s office.”
Jerry shook his head. “I saw
it. It was big and green. It chased me…”
Jerry now had Drew’s
undivided attention.
“What did you see?” Drew
asked as he stepped out of the bar and strode towards him. “Was it
a big green man-like figure with lumpy skin?”
“No,”
he said, shaking his head furiously. “It… It had horns and a
tail. Looked like a big lizard, but walked on two legs. It also had
these big clawed hands and…
and.”
“It’s
okay,” the guard said, resting
a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“You’re safe now.”
“Sounds like a Deathclaw,”
a voice to Drew’s right said.
Drew looked over to see an old
friend, Jarik standing there.
He was right, it did sound like
a Deathclaw. Well, apart from the green skin at least. Regardless, it
wasn’t good news.
“Maybe diseased?” Drew
guessed.
Jarik nodded in agreement.
“Deathclaws don’t have green skin. Not usually at least.
Radiation maybe?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,”
Drew began, “but Deathclaws can handle a lot of radiation. Lethal
amounts, so is it likely?”
Jarik nodded his head. “So
can ghouls, but give them too much and their brains start to turn to
mush. Makes them feral.”
“I thought that their brains
rotted?”
“That too,” Jarik said.
The gathered crowd watched as
Jerry was escorted towards the clinic. He’d clearly had a fright
and to be honest, if it was a Deathclaw he’d come face to face
with, then he was incredibly lucky. Most didn’t live to tell the
tale.
Jarik slapped Drew on the back.
“Come on, let’s grab a drink, I need to tell you something.”
“Uh,
sure,” Drew said as he followed him back inside.
Amy
looked
up from
a glass she was cleaning.
“Hey, what’s going on out there?”
“Jerry
saw something,” Jarik answered as
they
both sat at the bar. “Deathclaw.”
Amy looked at Drew. “You’ve
mentioned them before.”
“Yeah, and I was hoping they
would never find their way up here. I just hope that he saw something
else.”
Jarik shook his head. “He saw
a Deathclaw. Nothing else fits that description. Well, nothing that
comes to mind.”
“You sound certain?” Drew
said.
“That’s because I saw one
too,” Jarik revealed as he rested both hands on the bar. “I
caught a glimpse from the back and the thing was dark green and huge.
Like bigger than any Deathclaw I’ve ever seen down south. To say I
didn’t hang around is an understatement. I got the fuck outta there
as fast as I could.”
“Where was it?”
“Up near Deer Creek
Campground.”
“Shit.”
Amy leaned onto the bar. “What
was it doing?”
“Something weird.”
Drew raised an eyebrow.
“Weird?”
“It had two Radstags over its
shoulder. Just slung there. Another weird thing was it seemed more
upright.”
“Could the thing be
intelligent?” Amy asked.
Jarik took in a deep breath. “I
fucking hope not. Deathclaws aren’t stupid, but one that had actual
human intelligence would be fucking scary as shit.”
“Yeah,”
Drew agreed.
“The thing is, it also looked
a little less armored as well. I called the thing a Greenclaw, but
thankfully haven’t seen any more of them”
“Greenclaw, huh,” Drew
said.
Amy shivered. “Let’s hope
there aren’t any nests in the area.”
Jarik gave her an apologetic
look. “Sorry, kid, but if it’s up here then there’s a good
chance there’s a nest. It won’t be close to Colville as they
don’t like to nest too close to large settlements. At least not
usually.”
“Let’s hope so,” Drew
muttered. “Because if left unchecked, Deathclaws can wipe
settlements out. I know.”
“Colville is a very big
settlement, so I don’t think we have to worry,” Jarik pointed out
as he stood up. “Anyway, I need to get going. Things to do. Stay
safe.”
Drew
and Amy watched as
he left. The thought of there being Deathclaws,
particularly a variant breed in the area was not at all a pleasant
one and
brought back some bad memories.
Roughly
a decade ago, when Drew had still been a teen, he had been trapped in
a building for almost a week after
Deathclaws
had
wiped out a small settlement. They had prowled
outside for
days and he
had only managed to escape because some unwitting scavenger had
blundered into them. While the two claws had torn him apart, Drew had
been able to make his escape.
To this day, he sometimes still
had nightmares over it.
Amy stared at the door for a
moment before addressing him. “You think he’s being serious about
seeing that Deathclaw?”
“The so-called ‘Greenclaw’?”
Drew asked. “Yeah, he’s not one for bullshitting stuff like that.
If he saw a green Deathclaw carrying two Radstags on its shoulder,
then I believe it.”
“I guess. It’s just that
when I’ve heard them mentioned, it’s always been accompanied with
descriptive words such as ‘terrifying’ and ‘horrific’.”
“I’d add ‘nightmarish’
to those descriptors, but yeah. It’s not even the most terrifying
thing out here.”
“Don’t tell me, I don’t
want to know.”
Drew chuckled. “What’s
wrong? Want to be able to sleep tonight?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Don’t worry, I think we’re
safe here.”
Amy eyed him. “From things
like Deathclaws, right? The thing that Jarik and that guy have seen
hanging around?”
Drew sighed. “Yeah, maybe we
aren’t as safe as we think. I might take a look up there myself.”
“Bad idea,” Amy said almost
immediately. “At least without a fully armed team with you.”
“Better to stealth a
Deathclaw,” Drew told her. “Have a whole lot of people try and
take it down and you end up with a whole lot of dead people.
Especially if it turns out there is a nest and there’s more of
them. They are faster, stronger and resilient to bullets, and energy
weapons making them one tough fucker to bring down.”
“What was that about wanting
me to be able to sleep tonight?”
Drew shrugged. “Just being
honest.”
“As long as they don’t come
near town, I’ll be happy.”
“So will I.” Drew agreed
wholeheartedly. “Still want to come with me when I move out to that
Robco facility?”
“It’s looking less
appealing now that there are seven-foot-tall death lizards out
there.”
“Closer to nine feet,” Drew
corrected.
“Great, now I’m really
not gonna get any sleep tonight.”
“Don’t worry. This place is
surrounded by a pretty decent wall and a lot of guards.”
“A wall that was never
finished,” Amy pointed out.
“You mean the brick part of
the wall? Because a wall does surround the whole town. Well, the
center of it at least.”
“While the brick part might,
I don’t think the old rotting wood part will give much resistance
against a nine-foot monster.”
“Well, they ran out of
materials. Besides, the wood wall makes a decent barrier when paired
with those turrets.”
“I hope so.”
“Amy, this place is far
better defended than… You know… Paulson.”
“And look how that turned
out,” Amy said with a grimace.
It hadn’t turned out well at
all. Super Mutants had wiped out the town and had taken most of the
rest. There were a scarce few that survived, Amy, Jarik, Drew and
their close friend Jack being among them.
Their conversation was
interrupted by a rather irritated-sounding patron. “Hey! Some
service here!?”
Drew stood up. “I better let
you get on with your job. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yeah, see you tonight.”
As he stepped outside, he
noticed that it was starting to get dark. The old electric light
posts were beginning to turn on, giving the street a strange feeling
of serenity.
Colville
was a lot safer than most other places.
Everyone
knew everyone else, and there was also plenty of food, warmth, and
shelter. The
town also had a basic justice system, one that ranged from short-term
incarceration to exile, all
the way to a death sentence.
Strangely, exile was rarer than
the death sentence and was used as a last resort. There was a reason
of course. Roughly twenty years ago a group of exiles formed their
own raider group and began striking at the town. They had been dealt
with eventually, but since then only six people had been exiled,
around one every half-decade.
It was a shame, really, but
sometimes punishments had to be harsh and not necessarily to punish
the guilty, but to protect everyone else.
Arriving back at his shared
home, he found Jack sitting on the old couch listening to the radio.
“Hey, D,” Jack said as he
leaned over and switched it off. “How was the scavenging?”
“Could
have been better,” Drew said as he sat down next to him, the
couch creaking under
the added weight.
“Well, things at the purifier
could be better, too.”
“How so?” Drew asked.
“Something gone wrong?”
“Some
components need replacing and the foreman was wondering if you’d
get them for him?”
“If I can find them. What
does he need?”
Jack shrugged. “He has a
whole shopping list of parts.”
“Do you have it on you?”
“Didn’t write it down,”
Jack answered. “Wanted to tell you himself.”
“I
suppose I’ll have to go see
him
to
find out,”
Drew said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ll head down
tomorrow, maybe. Tonight I just wanna relax.”
“Same,”
Jack agreed. “So,
what did you find?”
“Some
bits and pieces and
an unfortunate scene.”
“What do you mean?” Jack
asked, frowning.
“Old Reginald blew himself
up, or it seems that way. His house was just debris.”
Jack’s mouth fell open. “Old
Reg? Shit. Do you know what happened?”
“As I said; he blew himself
up. Not sure how.”
“I
guess it was gonna happen sooner or later.”
“Yeah.
At least I got a fusion core out of it. I sold it to
Sandra.”
“That’s great. How much did
you get for it?”
“Enough,” Drew said. “It
will help me buy what I need to relocate.”
“When are you heading out
there to check the place out?”
Drew leaned back. “I’m
thinking about maybe heading out there tomorrow, but I’m not sure
yet.”
“Can I come?”
“No,” Drew said firmly.
“Firstly, I need you to keep making wage. It’ll help us relocate,
and secondly, I still don’t know how dangerous it is. The last
thing I want is for you to get hurt.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Gemma used to say the same
thing,” Drew said darkly before he stood up. “I’m heading to
bed, need to be up early. See you tomorrow.”