Megaton
Ellen's neck was starting to ache with the effort of not looking up. The thought of the sky's vastness was bad enough. Having to acknowledge it was more than she was really ready to do. Besides, the ground was rough and uneven, and she'd already tripped and fallen several times. Better to keep looking down, and once in a while, looking around. There'd been this horrible hairless thing with teeth as long as her index finger. If she was lucky there'd be a doctor in Megaton when she got there. All she really wanted was some antiseptic. The bites weren't worth wasting a stimpak on.
She stopped at the top of a rise to get her bearings. There'd been a crudely painted sign pointing this way, just like Doc Hoff had promised, but that'd been a ways back. Where-
Hmm. Off in the distance, she could see the wreckage of one of the old elevated roads. The scale of the thing was absolutely staggering, to the degree that she felt her stomach clenching again at being somewhere so open that a road like that could fit into it. More importantly, though, there was an enormous pile of what looked like metal between the highway and her current position. And if she tilted her head and squinted a little... yep. That did, in fact, look like the picture in the Overseer's computer. And like the image Mr. Deegan's vision had shown her. With the first feeling of real relief she'd had in ages, Ellen readjusted her laundry knapsack over her shoulder and set off at a jog for what she hoped was Megaton.
A glimmer of light caught her eye as she drew closer, from something a little ways in front of the metal heap- the head of a Protectron robot. That was a good sign. If there was a Protectron here and it was still operational, someone had to be looking after it. She altered her course to head in the robot's direction. It was a bad idea to sneak up on them, even if they were programmed to recognize you, and this one wasn't.
"Help! Please!" called a man's voice from off to her left.
Ellen stopped in her tracks and turned. The speaker was a bearded, pale-haired man huddled on the ground with his back to several rocks. He looked, frankly, like he'd been through more than his share of wringers. "Sir?" she asked curiously. "Are you all right?"
"Water- I need water-" He licked his cracked lips ineffectually. "Ive been drinking this irradiated shit and... I can't do it. I just throw it up now. I need purified water... please..."
Ellen glanced over at the steel walls rearing up from the landscape; she could see, now, that they were walls and not just scrap. That meant Megaton, and that meant enough people to support a traveling merchant's visits. A doctor's visits, for that matter. Couldn't the man just go in there and ask? ... no, it occurred to her that the Overseer had always preached a doctrine of 'he who does not work, does not eat'. If this man had been drinking radioactive water long enough to be violently ill from it, he was probably too sick to work, and had probably been driven out of the town for it. Lord knew that Reverend Avellone had been in more than one disagreement with the Overseer on similar subjects, and the Vault environment was a lot less harsh than up here.
With that thought firmly in mind, Ellen unshouldered her knapsack. "Hang on," she said. "I've got some purified water here you can have."
The man blinked at her. "I can just have it?" he said. "For free? You- you don't want any caps, or anything?"
There had been a cross-stitched Bible verse on the wall of her father's office for as long as Ellen could remember. She'd asked him about it once; he'd said it was her mother's favorite verse, and that she'd found great comfort in it. "'I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is athirst of the water of the fountain of life I will give freely,'" Ellen quoted quietly. "Here you go."
An incredulous smile crossed the man's face. "Water," he said, "precious water... thank you, miss, you're a saint!"
That didn't give her a lot of hope for what she'd find inside those walls. Nevertheless, Ellen shook her head. "No, sir. Just my mother's daughter," she said. "Say- you wouldn't happen to have seen a man who looked like me here recently, would you? Very recently?"
Once he'd gulped down about half the bottle, the man shook his head. "I- I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't really seen much of anybody. I haven't been well enough to notice much other than what's right in front of me."
Ellen winced and fished out another bottle. "I have a feeling you're going to need this one, too," she said. "Take care, sir."
"You too, miss. And thank you again."
The Protectron hadn't moved from its spot when Ellen stood up. "Welcome to Megaton," it announced in the same heavily synthesized drone as the storeroom Protectrons. "The bomb is perfectly safe, we promise. Please hold for threat level assessment."
"Bomb? What bomb?" Ellen asked, alarmed.
The robot ignored the question, which was fairly typical; the storeroom Protectrons had a pretty limited vocabulary of responses, too. More effort had gone into making them stand upright and move like human beings than giving them intelligence. "Threat level minimal. Open the gates. Open the gates. Welcome to Megaton."
"Go back to the part about the bomb," Ellen said, but if the Protectron said anything else it was lost in the rumble of the huge corrugated metal door sliding inexorably upwards. Ellen shook her head and moved forward.
On the other side of the gates lay what Ellen could only assume was a town. It looked nothing at all like the wreckage she'd just passed through, but was instead composed entirely of other wreckage. At least, it certainly looked that way. Boxy compartments made from what had to have been scavenged metal dotted virtually every surface in sight, and what wasn't taken up with some compartment or other was supporting a railed walkway or flight of stairs. Huge pipes poked out of the ground here and there, including one just to Ellen's left, next to the stairs set into the dusty soil beneath her feet. The slant of the ground gave the feeling of the whole place having been carved into the sides of some great pit or crater; she squinted down the slope from where she stood, trying to find the bottom. It looked as if there were a pool of water in the distance, so that might possibly be it. And, hey, there was another of those two-headed cows down there-
"I'll be damned, another newcomer," said a man's voice.
Ellen jerked her attention back to the space in front of her. The man who had spoken was a grizzled-looking black man, square-jawed and bearded. He wore a long, patched leather coat with its sleeves pushed halfway up his biceps, a broad-brimmed hat like something out of an old cowboy movie, and some sort of very large gun slung across his back. There was a silver five-pointed star pinned to his coat's chest. Ellen gulped and said, "Yes, sir."
"Name's Lucas Simms," the man said companionably. "Town sheriff. And mayor, too, when the need arises. You're from that Vault 101, aren't you? I ain't seen one of those jumpsuits in a long, long time."
That meant he probably hadn't seen her father. Ellen winced inwardly, but nodded. "Nice town you have here, sir."
The man's eyebrows went up. "Friendly and well-mannered, huh? I think we're gonna get along just fine. You treat my people nice, and you're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."
That was reassuring, at least. "That won't be a problem, sir," Ellen said. a little faintly. "I'm just looking for my father."
Simms shook his head. "I don't remember seeing anyone from that Vault of yours lately. If your dad came through here, the only place he'd be likely to go that I wouldn't see him'd be Moriarty's. That's the saloon on the other side of the crater."
"Um. About that, sir-" Ellen glanced over his shoulder. "Your robot said something about a bomb?"
"Yeah." Simms made a disgusted face. "Down there, in the water. It's been there since day one."
Ellen leaned over and squinted towards the water in question. There was something in the middle, all right. Something huge. It occurred to her that the town's name probably meant- "That's an actual atomic bomb?" she almost squeaked.
"Unfortunately," said Simms. "I don't trust any of the locals to tinker with it. Most of 'em don't even realize it's still a threat. And hell, Cromwell and those crazies from the Church of Atom, they worship the damn thing."
Ellen shook her head in horrified surprise. "And it's just sitting there. No one's tried to disarm it..." she murmured, more to herself than anything else.
Simms overheard, though. "Why? Think you could take it down?"
"I don't... I have no idea, sir," Ellen answered honestly. "I know my way around a lot of dangerous systems, and I could probably undo the control mechanisms if they're anything like the overload mechanisms we had on the Vault reactor, but-"
"Look, if you can do it, there's a hundred and fifty caps in it for you," said Simms. "But don't go fooling around with it just yet. Take a look at it first and make damn sure you know what you're doing. I don't want anyone taking chances with that thing."
"I don't blame you, sir," said Ellen. "Not one bit."
"Good. Let me know what you think before you do anything, or if you decide you're gonna leave town," said Simms. "Just be careful when you go to Moriarty's. Colin Moriarty runs the place, and that man's nothing but trouble."
"Thank you, sir," said Ellen. "I'd... probably better go now."
"You take care of yourself," Simms said, and continued on his way.
She stopped at the top of a rise to get her bearings. There'd been a crudely painted sign pointing this way, just like Doc Hoff had promised, but that'd been a ways back. Where-
Hmm. Off in the distance, she could see the wreckage of one of the old elevated roads. The scale of the thing was absolutely staggering, to the degree that she felt her stomach clenching again at being somewhere so open that a road like that could fit into it. More importantly, though, there was an enormous pile of what looked like metal between the highway and her current position. And if she tilted her head and squinted a little... yep. That did, in fact, look like the picture in the Overseer's computer. And like the image Mr. Deegan's vision had shown her. With the first feeling of real relief she'd had in ages, Ellen readjusted her laundry knapsack over her shoulder and set off at a jog for what she hoped was Megaton.
A glimmer of light caught her eye as she drew closer, from something a little ways in front of the metal heap- the head of a Protectron robot. That was a good sign. If there was a Protectron here and it was still operational, someone had to be looking after it. She altered her course to head in the robot's direction. It was a bad idea to sneak up on them, even if they were programmed to recognize you, and this one wasn't.
"Help! Please!" called a man's voice from off to her left.
Ellen stopped in her tracks and turned. The speaker was a bearded, pale-haired man huddled on the ground with his back to several rocks. He looked, frankly, like he'd been through more than his share of wringers. "Sir?" she asked curiously. "Are you all right?"
"Water- I need water-" He licked his cracked lips ineffectually. "Ive been drinking this irradiated shit and... I can't do it. I just throw it up now. I need purified water... please..."
Ellen glanced over at the steel walls rearing up from the landscape; she could see, now, that they were walls and not just scrap. That meant Megaton, and that meant enough people to support a traveling merchant's visits. A doctor's visits, for that matter. Couldn't the man just go in there and ask? ... no, it occurred to her that the Overseer had always preached a doctrine of 'he who does not work, does not eat'. If this man had been drinking radioactive water long enough to be violently ill from it, he was probably too sick to work, and had probably been driven out of the town for it. Lord knew that Reverend Avellone had been in more than one disagreement with the Overseer on similar subjects, and the Vault environment was a lot less harsh than up here.
With that thought firmly in mind, Ellen unshouldered her knapsack. "Hang on," she said. "I've got some purified water here you can have."
The man blinked at her. "I can just have it?" he said. "For free? You- you don't want any caps, or anything?"
There had been a cross-stitched Bible verse on the wall of her father's office for as long as Ellen could remember. She'd asked him about it once; he'd said it was her mother's favorite verse, and that she'd found great comfort in it. "'I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is athirst of the water of the fountain of life I will give freely,'" Ellen quoted quietly. "Here you go."
An incredulous smile crossed the man's face. "Water," he said, "precious water... thank you, miss, you're a saint!"
That didn't give her a lot of hope for what she'd find inside those walls. Nevertheless, Ellen shook her head. "No, sir. Just my mother's daughter," she said. "Say- you wouldn't happen to have seen a man who looked like me here recently, would you? Very recently?"
Once he'd gulped down about half the bottle, the man shook his head. "I- I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't really seen much of anybody. I haven't been well enough to notice much other than what's right in front of me."
Ellen winced and fished out another bottle. "I have a feeling you're going to need this one, too," she said. "Take care, sir."
"You too, miss. And thank you again."
The Protectron hadn't moved from its spot when Ellen stood up. "Welcome to Megaton," it announced in the same heavily synthesized drone as the storeroom Protectrons. "The bomb is perfectly safe, we promise. Please hold for threat level assessment."
"Bomb? What bomb?" Ellen asked, alarmed.
The robot ignored the question, which was fairly typical; the storeroom Protectrons had a pretty limited vocabulary of responses, too. More effort had gone into making them stand upright and move like human beings than giving them intelligence. "Threat level minimal. Open the gates. Open the gates. Welcome to Megaton."
"Go back to the part about the bomb," Ellen said, but if the Protectron said anything else it was lost in the rumble of the huge corrugated metal door sliding inexorably upwards. Ellen shook her head and moved forward.
On the other side of the gates lay what Ellen could only assume was a town. It looked nothing at all like the wreckage she'd just passed through, but was instead composed entirely of other wreckage. At least, it certainly looked that way. Boxy compartments made from what had to have been scavenged metal dotted virtually every surface in sight, and what wasn't taken up with some compartment or other was supporting a railed walkway or flight of stairs. Huge pipes poked out of the ground here and there, including one just to Ellen's left, next to the stairs set into the dusty soil beneath her feet. The slant of the ground gave the feeling of the whole place having been carved into the sides of some great pit or crater; she squinted down the slope from where she stood, trying to find the bottom. It looked as if there were a pool of water in the distance, so that might possibly be it. And, hey, there was another of those two-headed cows down there-
"I'll be damned, another newcomer," said a man's voice.
Ellen jerked her attention back to the space in front of her. The man who had spoken was a grizzled-looking black man, square-jawed and bearded. He wore a long, patched leather coat with its sleeves pushed halfway up his biceps, a broad-brimmed hat like something out of an old cowboy movie, and some sort of very large gun slung across his back. There was a silver five-pointed star pinned to his coat's chest. Ellen gulped and said, "Yes, sir."
"Name's Lucas Simms," the man said companionably. "Town sheriff. And mayor, too, when the need arises. You're from that Vault 101, aren't you? I ain't seen one of those jumpsuits in a long, long time."
That meant he probably hadn't seen her father. Ellen winced inwardly, but nodded. "Nice town you have here, sir."
The man's eyebrows went up. "Friendly and well-mannered, huh? I think we're gonna get along just fine. You treat my people nice, and you're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."
That was reassuring, at least. "That won't be a problem, sir," Ellen said. a little faintly. "I'm just looking for my father."
Simms shook his head. "I don't remember seeing anyone from that Vault of yours lately. If your dad came through here, the only place he'd be likely to go that I wouldn't see him'd be Moriarty's. That's the saloon on the other side of the crater."
"Um. About that, sir-" Ellen glanced over his shoulder. "Your robot said something about a bomb?"
"Yeah." Simms made a disgusted face. "Down there, in the water. It's been there since day one."
Ellen leaned over and squinted towards the water in question. There was something in the middle, all right. Something huge. It occurred to her that the town's name probably meant- "That's an actual atomic bomb?" she almost squeaked.
"Unfortunately," said Simms. "I don't trust any of the locals to tinker with it. Most of 'em don't even realize it's still a threat. And hell, Cromwell and those crazies from the Church of Atom, they worship the damn thing."
Ellen shook her head in horrified surprise. "And it's just sitting there. No one's tried to disarm it..." she murmured, more to herself than anything else.
Simms overheard, though. "Why? Think you could take it down?"
"I don't... I have no idea, sir," Ellen answered honestly. "I know my way around a lot of dangerous systems, and I could probably undo the control mechanisms if they're anything like the overload mechanisms we had on the Vault reactor, but-"
"Look, if you can do it, there's a hundred and fifty caps in it for you," said Simms. "But don't go fooling around with it just yet. Take a look at it first and make damn sure you know what you're doing. I don't want anyone taking chances with that thing."
"I don't blame you, sir," said Ellen. "Not one bit."
"Good. Let me know what you think before you do anything, or if you decide you're gonna leave town," said Simms. "Just be careful when you go to Moriarty's. Colin Moriarty runs the place, and that man's nothing but trouble."
"Thank you, sir," said Ellen. "I'd... probably better go now."
"You take care of yourself," Simms said, and continued on his way.