Taking Liberties in The Capital Wasteland part one
Title: Taking Liberties in The Capital Wasteland
Rating: R
Pairing: Tony/McGee
Summary: McGee has been kicked out of his home in this futuristic post nuclear apocalyptic adventure, where he has to learn the ways of the wastes and become a real man while trying to find his dad and meeting new characters along the way. Includes original artwork!
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own the characters, but the situations I put them in are totally mine!
Warning: Strong language and situations, futuristic sci-fi tech, violence, etc.
My heart is pounding, I'm sweating, my breath is short and almost impossible to catch. Bullets whiz by my face every time I peek around the check out counter of the Super Duper Mart. Tony has propped himself up against the adjacent register counter, he's clutching his side and I know he has been shot more than once; he's bleeding out. Fuck. God damn it, Tony.
We've been in this on going fire fight for at least 30 minutes now with a larger group of raiders than we had expected. We were hired to retrieve some information and parts from this old shit hole. We knew there would be trouble here, and we were sneaking around fairly well before, like the fucking newbie I am, I stumbled into an old display of oil cans. And then came the storm of bullets. I'm such an asshole. Tony is probably going to die, I only have a few stimpaks, and I doubt they will help enough to get him back to a doctor.
I hear him laugh, "This is our last stand, McGee...Are you ready?" No, I'm not, he can't die now. If I can somehow survive this shoot out, I know I won't survive The Capital Wasteland for more than an hour or two without Tony. He's my fucking right hand man, I mean jesus, listen to the way I talk for fuck's sake. I have a mouth worse than a sailor, I got it all from him.
"No, it's not, Tony...Take my stimpaks, all of them. We're getting out of here, and we're fucking killing those pussy ass raiders right before we do!" I reload my laser pistol with one of my last electron charge packs. He laughs again, this time he coughs up blood,
"Oh, man, McGee," he winces, "You're so fucking hardcore. Okay. G'me your stimpaks...I'll do this with you, yeah..." he winces again as he reaches his hand out, "Fuck yeah..."
Sometimes I don't even remember how I got here, I've been out here a really long time and I'm a completely different person than I was before. Sometimes I have dreams about my life before The Capital Wasteland, and then I remember.
I remember every detail about how I got here and where I'm going. It's rare, though, and easy to forget, especially with all of the drugs I've been on since I met Tony. But for some reason, right at this very moment, my mind stops time, everything moving in super slow motion. I hear another barrage of gun fire, all of the bullets smacking into the counters and crates of soda bottles I had set up for cover. Everything stops, everything is muffled and far away, and then I remember.
~!@#$%^&*
I remember waking up to sirens and red blinking lights. It was so obnoxious, it was Saturday and I was going to sleep in. I wanted it so bad. Damn it. I get up and look for my dad in his room, he's not there. What?
"Dad?!" I call out several times, and I can't find him anywhere in our quarters. I go back to my room and change into my jumpsuit. I always had liked my jumpsuit, it was a nice shade of blue and had our vault number, 101, printed on the back in yellow. It complemented my Pip-Boy's color and fit very comfortably.
I peek my head out into the hallway and look around, it's completely still. The sirens still blaring and the red lights still flashing urgently. I felt the need to use caution with this, it all seemed very unusual. I slowly stepped out into the hall, my buddy Nick runs by and pushes me back into the wall,
"Hey, asshole! Your dad fucked everything up!" he disappears around the corner, then several shots ring out followed by Nick's screams and more gun fire. It must have been right around the corner, it hurt my ears and I could barely hear for several minutes. I run back into my quarters, rubbing my ears hoping that would help me hear again. What the hell is going on?! Where's my dad?!
I run back to my room and go through my things, I grab my BB Gun, my baseball bat, a few stimpaks from the bathroom, and found a holotape on the table from my dad. I log them all into my inventory on my Pip-Boy, and quietly sneak back into the hallway. Everything is quiet, except for the alarms of course, but no more shooting or screaming so far. Still, I crouch and sneak along the side of the wall and around the corner, there is blood, lots of blood, all over the hallway. Really, ALL OVER the hallway, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. My heart begins to pound with a hard, deep thumping in my chest. There wasn't a body, or anyone else to be found near by.
I equip my bat and continue down the bloody hallway. I pass by an open door way, it looks like nobody is inside so I sneak in, keeping my back to the wall. As I'm looking around for guards or residents, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I swing around with my bat ready to strike,
"McGee!" It's Sasha, she's my only friend here. Or at least the only friend I have that doesn't treat me like shit.
"Sasha?! What the hell is going on here?!" I point to the hallway.
"It's your dad!"
"What?! My dad didn't do that!"
My dad isn't my biological dad. He's my step dad, but I have no memory of my real dad. He died of some sort of liver cancer thing, I don't know, I haven't been given many details about it. Which I find to be somewhat suspicious and curious. But my mom re-married a few years after his death to a man named Gibbs. Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He's been pretty good to me, he can be kind of scary sometimes but he's a good guy and means well. I love him like a dad, that's for sure. He's a scientist too, a very smart scientist. He's always working on hydroponic plant growing, specifically food producing plants, but the trick has always been to purify the water and keep it purified. He's all I have now, anyway, my mom passed away a few years ago from heart complications. She always had problems with her heart and it just kept getting worse.
"No, your dad. You know he left, right? He left the vault! I was hoping you would have some insight as to what the hell is going on!" She shut the door and turned off the lights.
"My dad left?! What?! How?!"
"Quiet!" she shushed me, "They're looking for you now, because of your dad they're all coming for you. They're going to kill you, McGee. You have to get out of here too!"
"What?! I can't lea-" she put her finger over my mouth.
"You have to go. Look, some people want to leave, some people don't, some people don't care...But it's really getting fucked up and people are fighting and dying!"
"But I don't have anywhere to go! Who knows what's out there! I could die!"
"You WILL die if you stay here! Come on, I can get you to the vault door safely, and then you have to get out."
"But I-" She grabs my arm and pulls me out into the hallway, running as fast as she can and I'm struggling to keep up. We've been able to by pass everyone so far, and avoid some more gun fire in the cafeteria. We're in the hallway approaching the huge, gear-like vault door which was now wide open. There are two guards, with guns, waiting by the door.
"Wait here, I have an idea..."
"No! Wait! Sasha!" And she ran off toward them, I remained hidden behind some supply boxes in the darkened hallway.
"Hey!" I hear her call out to them, "I think I found him hiding, come on! Follow me!" I peek up and see her leading them down another corridor. I catch her eye one more time before she disappears with the guards. I'll probably never see her again. I know she had always had a crush on me, that's why she had been so nice to me throughout the years. It's too bad she'll never know I didn't like her back, and that I kind of had a thing for Nick since we were kids. And she never will. I take that as my cue and I run toward the door, I can't believe I'm doing this!
"Stop!" A big voice booms behind me, I obey because I can feel his gun pointing at me. I slowly turn around, hiding my bat behind my body.
"Surrender, kid!" A guard jogs up to me and shoves his gun in my face, I think I'm going to pee my pants, but I don't budge.
"I'll kill you, kid, if you don't surrender and come with me now!" I take a deep breath and without much thought, I swing my bat at his head as hard as I can. I knock his helmet off and knock him to the ground. He's stunned. I step over him and hit him again. I hit him until he finally stops moving. I don't know to this day if I killed him or not, I'm pretty sure I did. And like a savage I strip off his security armor and take his helmet, I grab his gun and extra ammo from his pocket, one stimpak, and I log it all into my Pip-Boy. I guess I have always been a natural born killer, much like the brutal murderer I am today. I turn around and run through the threshold of the vault door into the cavern, there's an old wooden door at the end with light pouring in through the slits.
I run into the cavern, my head buzzing, this has to be a dream. I turn around to look one last time, I hear more shooting and screaming. I run faster toward the door, this is it, no going back. I pull the flimsy door open, and I'm hit with a torrent of warm, burning, bright sun light. I have never seen the sun before, I was born in that vault. I stumble out onto rocks and dirt, and I kneel down keeping my hands over my eyes for several minutes.
As my eyes finally adjust, I climb up a small incline that over looks a vast world of isolation and destruction. Every color, every shadow is so vibrant and almost burns my eyes. It's beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic at the same time. It makes me feel sick.
A rotting and pulverized Washington DC skyline floats on the horizon far to the East. There's a maze of freeway over passes right in front of my over look, most of them are crumbling to pieces with huge sections missing, having fallen to the ground 200 years ago. I feel so sheltered from this world and from our history, which is a huge understatement.
What I was taught in school was that 200 years ago there was a huge nuclear war all over the world. The US was hit pretty bad, but a good number of people were saved by huge underground vaults like mine. However, there were lots of people who didn't make it and died or were left out here to try to survive.
I have no idea if there's anyone else still living out here, or anything for that matter. From here there is no vegetation. Just dead husks of trees, jutting out of the ground like burned toothpicks and plenty of dead weeds and shrubs. Everything, everyone, and everywhere is completely dead. It makes me feel so absolutely small and insignificant I'm overwhelmed with a sense of isolation and sadness. All of my energy is sucked out of my body and I collapse to my knees. Fuck! I'll never find my dad out here! I'm doomed! I have no water, no food! I'm dead! I scream and bang my fist against a rock until it throbs. I reluctantly get up and drag myself down the side of the hill onto what's left of a road.
I look both ways several times. I'm not looking for traffic, but rather trying to decide which way my dad went. After several long minutes of trying to decide which way will take me to death faster, I settle on going left. I take a deep breath and start jogging along the disintegrating road. I jog under one of the over passes, probably 50 feet above me it creaks and groans, threatening to collapse on top of me. I stare up at it as I pass under, just to make sure.
When I drop my eyes back down I find myself in, what's left of, a neighborhood. There are a few in tact houses but most of them are skeletons or just piles of rubble. To my left, half way buried in the rubble of the closest property, I notice a small safe. There has to be something in there that might help me out here. I run over to it. Of course it's locked, but I've been getting better with my lock pick set, so I feel confident I can pop this thing open. It takes less than a minute for me to pick it. Success!
Inside I find some different ammo but no gun, several bottle caps for some reason, one bottle of purified water, Rad-Away, one stimpak, and something my Pip-Boy identifies as Jett. It comes in a little inhaler, maybe it's some sort of asthma medicine. I knew a girl who had that and she always had trouble breathing without her inhaler. I take it all and log it into my Pip-Boy. I have got to find my dad. There has to be a reason for why he's out here, and why I have to go after him.
Once I'm done with the safe, I keep running along the road out into the wastes. Out into long expanses of nothingness. At least it's October and it's not terribly hot out here, but it's not very warm either and I'm sure it will get colder at night...Which gives me maybe 8 or 9 hours of light, I'm glad it's still early.
I walk for hours, I'm really hungry and rationing the water. I'm tired enough to sit down in the shade of some rocks and dead trees. I sit there for a while just staring at the horizon, the whole city was collapsing under itself and rotting away. It's the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. As I'm having a life affirming epiphany, a little green blip pops up in my Pip Boy's radar.
My Pip-Boy 3000 is a very awesome device. First of all, it was surgically implanted onto my body when I was 10. It's a little metal sleeve on my wrist with an interactive screen, buttons, dials, and a Geiger Counter. It can tell me how healthy I am, if I have been irradiated, what I have logged into it such as weapons, ammo, apparel, aid, and miscellaneous things. And when I say logged into the Pip-Boy, I mean they actually go into the Pip-Boy. I don't understand it at all, no matter how much I study computers and technology. I don't get it and I can't figure it out. It's able to distribute the weight of the objects all over my body. But what I have always liked about it, was that I have a radar, compass, health, and condition display in my field of vision! It's tech like this that's inspired me to study it and practice with it as much as possible.
I've always known the Pip-Boy was intended for battle, especially with V.A.T.S. included into the software. Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. I've never used it in a real life situation, but I've flipped it on a few times and pretended to shoot at people when I was a kid.
I take notice to the blip after a few minutes and realize it's a friendly person or living something over to the East. It could be my dad! I jump up and start running. I reach the crest of a hill and on the other side are a few cow-like animals a few hundred yards away and a deeper valley beyond that. This could be an opportunity for food, although I'm not sure I'm ready to shoot and gut a cow to eat it. But it might be a benefit to me to take advantage of this situation.
I walk closer to the cows, as I get closer I see that they are not cows at all. They're hideous, disfigured, rotting, smelly creatures. It vaguely resembles a cow, as it has a similar shape, pus filled blisters on their utters, horns, hooves, and two heads! What the fuck?! My Pip-Boy identifies it as a Brahmin. The radiation out here must be insane for this to happen, but so far my Geiger Counter has not detected anything yet. I don't think I can kill that and eat it. It's such a disgusting disappointment. I turn around to leave and three hostile red blips pop up on my radar. Adrenaline starts to pour through me, especially when I see them come over the same hill I had, but with weapons drawn. A baseball bat, a crow bar, and the last one had a small hand gun. I turn to run, I need more distance between them and myself. I struggle to equip my gun and load it up with more ammo, and I didn't even think about the armor I had.
They're yelling and hollering got closer and closer. I turn to aim but they're already on top of me, "Raiders," my Pip-Boy reads in my visual field. I freeze and fall down on my ass. A loud gun shot rings out and one of them is suddenly shot in the head and falls to the ground. The other two turn their attention to the direction of the shot.
There's a figure approaching the Raiders. The sun is behind him, so I can't see him at all other than a blurry black silhouette casually strolling down the hill. One of them runs up the hill toward him, brandishing his gun, and he's quickly taken down with more finesse than the first. The mysterious stranger throws a knife into his neck. He has plenty of time to pull it out and clean it off before the last Raider can react. He has already shot him in the legs with his sawed-off shotgun and finally finishes him off with a shot to the face.
I'm still on my back watching everything unfold. He stares right at me and comes my way. Great, now he's going to kill me! He saunters over like a cowboy, holstering his weapon, his face reaches the shadows and I can finally see it. He's wearing goggles on his forehead, his dirty-brown hair is perched over the lenses, a leather jacket with clearly homemade metal armor plating on his shoulders, filthy denim pants, and boots. He is the most attractive man I have ever met in my entire life.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can smell him from 10 feet away, he's dirty and scruffy, but he's got all of his teeth as far as I can tell and they're in pretty good shape. He's extraordinarily pretty. He smiles at me and reaches a hand out to me, I suddenly become very self-aware of the torrents of blood rushing to my groin. Why now?!
I reluctantly take his hand and he pulls me up to my feet, "Thanks...Mr...?"
"DiNozzo...Tony. Tony DiNozzo...Jr...Tony DiNozzo Jr.," looking pleased with himself, pulls a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket, and lights it while cupping his hand over the flame.
"What are you doing out here, vault-dweller? You're going to get yourself killed, you know?"
"Long story short, my dad left the vault, I was kicked out too, and now I have to find him out here. Why aren't you trying to kill me too, like those guys?" I point to the corpses.
"That wasn't my plan...I saw you a few hours ago leaving your vault and walking out this way, I followed you because I...Considered robbing you," he blows smoke away from my face.
"Are you?"
"Nah, not anymore. I just can't bring myself to harm you in anyway for some reason. I can tell you have worse things going for you right now...You're so pale and clean, you stand out like a sore thumb. So what's your name?"
"Tim McGee," I reach to shake his hand, he takes it and smiles,
"Well, Tim McGee, nice to meet you. Look, I can get you to the nearest city and you can ask around if anyone has seen your dad. It's the closest place to your vault so he probably hit it up, if he's not still there," he drops his cigarette butt to the ground and twists it into the dirt with his boot.
"Hey, thanks! Why are you helping me so much?"
"Lets just say...I see something in you and I want to help you."
"Alright," I chuckle.
"Do you have any armor? You're going to need it if you're living out here in The Capital Wasteland."
"Um...I do actually!"
"Put it on, and lets go!" I throw on my armor and helmet that I stole from the guard. Tony laughs at it and pulls on the helmet chin strap.
"That'll do for now, we'll get you something better later," he laughs and pats me on the back, it made my shoulder tingle up to my scalp, "Come on."
"So, how old are you anyway?" He asks as we begin walking.
"Uh...20. How old are you?"
"You look younger than that," he squints his eyes at me and a slow smile creeps up on his face, "But I'll take your word for it...I'm 26."
His smile fades and he stares stoically to the South East toward this city he claimed of, I can't wait to finally find my dad and get back home.
(To Be Continued)
Rating: R
Pairing: Tony/McGee
Summary: McGee has been kicked out of his home in this futuristic post nuclear apocalyptic adventure, where he has to learn the ways of the wastes and become a real man while trying to find his dad and meeting new characters along the way. Includes original artwork!
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own the characters, but the situations I put them in are totally mine!
Warning: Strong language and situations, futuristic sci-fi tech, violence, etc.
My heart is pounding, I'm sweating, my breath is short and almost impossible to catch. Bullets whiz by my face every time I peek around the check out counter of the Super Duper Mart. Tony has propped himself up against the adjacent register counter, he's clutching his side and I know he has been shot more than once; he's bleeding out. Fuck. God damn it, Tony.
We've been in this on going fire fight for at least 30 minutes now with a larger group of raiders than we had expected. We were hired to retrieve some information and parts from this old shit hole. We knew there would be trouble here, and we were sneaking around fairly well before, like the fucking newbie I am, I stumbled into an old display of oil cans. And then came the storm of bullets. I'm such an asshole. Tony is probably going to die, I only have a few stimpaks, and I doubt they will help enough to get him back to a doctor.
I hear him laugh, "This is our last stand, McGee...Are you ready?" No, I'm not, he can't die now. If I can somehow survive this shoot out, I know I won't survive The Capital Wasteland for more than an hour or two without Tony. He's my fucking right hand man, I mean jesus, listen to the way I talk for fuck's sake. I have a mouth worse than a sailor, I got it all from him.
"No, it's not, Tony...Take my stimpaks, all of them. We're getting out of here, and we're fucking killing those pussy ass raiders right before we do!" I reload my laser pistol with one of my last electron charge packs. He laughs again, this time he coughs up blood,
"Oh, man, McGee," he winces, "You're so fucking hardcore. Okay. G'me your stimpaks...I'll do this with you, yeah..." he winces again as he reaches his hand out, "Fuck yeah..."
Sometimes I don't even remember how I got here, I've been out here a really long time and I'm a completely different person than I was before. Sometimes I have dreams about my life before The Capital Wasteland, and then I remember.
I remember every detail about how I got here and where I'm going. It's rare, though, and easy to forget, especially with all of the drugs I've been on since I met Tony. But for some reason, right at this very moment, my mind stops time, everything moving in super slow motion. I hear another barrage of gun fire, all of the bullets smacking into the counters and crates of soda bottles I had set up for cover. Everything stops, everything is muffled and far away, and then I remember.
~!@#$%^&*
I remember waking up to sirens and red blinking lights. It was so obnoxious, it was Saturday and I was going to sleep in. I wanted it so bad. Damn it. I get up and look for my dad in his room, he's not there. What?
"Dad?!" I call out several times, and I can't find him anywhere in our quarters. I go back to my room and change into my jumpsuit. I always had liked my jumpsuit, it was a nice shade of blue and had our vault number, 101, printed on the back in yellow. It complemented my Pip-Boy's color and fit very comfortably.
I peek my head out into the hallway and look around, it's completely still. The sirens still blaring and the red lights still flashing urgently. I felt the need to use caution with this, it all seemed very unusual. I slowly stepped out into the hall, my buddy Nick runs by and pushes me back into the wall,
"Hey, asshole! Your dad fucked everything up!" he disappears around the corner, then several shots ring out followed by Nick's screams and more gun fire. It must have been right around the corner, it hurt my ears and I could barely hear for several minutes. I run back into my quarters, rubbing my ears hoping that would help me hear again. What the hell is going on?! Where's my dad?!
I run back to my room and go through my things, I grab my BB Gun, my baseball bat, a few stimpaks from the bathroom, and found a holotape on the table from my dad. I log them all into my inventory on my Pip-Boy, and quietly sneak back into the hallway. Everything is quiet, except for the alarms of course, but no more shooting or screaming so far. Still, I crouch and sneak along the side of the wall and around the corner, there is blood, lots of blood, all over the hallway. Really, ALL OVER the hallway, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. My heart begins to pound with a hard, deep thumping in my chest. There wasn't a body, or anyone else to be found near by.
I equip my bat and continue down the bloody hallway. I pass by an open door way, it looks like nobody is inside so I sneak in, keeping my back to the wall. As I'm looking around for guards or residents, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I swing around with my bat ready to strike,
"McGee!" It's Sasha, she's my only friend here. Or at least the only friend I have that doesn't treat me like shit.
"Sasha?! What the hell is going on here?!" I point to the hallway.
"It's your dad!"
"What?! My dad didn't do that!"
My dad isn't my biological dad. He's my step dad, but I have no memory of my real dad. He died of some sort of liver cancer thing, I don't know, I haven't been given many details about it. Which I find to be somewhat suspicious and curious. But my mom re-married a few years after his death to a man named Gibbs. Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He's been pretty good to me, he can be kind of scary sometimes but he's a good guy and means well. I love him like a dad, that's for sure. He's a scientist too, a very smart scientist. He's always working on hydroponic plant growing, specifically food producing plants, but the trick has always been to purify the water and keep it purified. He's all I have now, anyway, my mom passed away a few years ago from heart complications. She always had problems with her heart and it just kept getting worse.
"No, your dad. You know he left, right? He left the vault! I was hoping you would have some insight as to what the hell is going on!" She shut the door and turned off the lights.
"My dad left?! What?! How?!"
"Quiet!" she shushed me, "They're looking for you now, because of your dad they're all coming for you. They're going to kill you, McGee. You have to get out of here too!"
"What?! I can't lea-" she put her finger over my mouth.
"You have to go. Look, some people want to leave, some people don't, some people don't care...But it's really getting fucked up and people are fighting and dying!"
"But I don't have anywhere to go! Who knows what's out there! I could die!"
"You WILL die if you stay here! Come on, I can get you to the vault door safely, and then you have to get out."
"But I-" She grabs my arm and pulls me out into the hallway, running as fast as she can and I'm struggling to keep up. We've been able to by pass everyone so far, and avoid some more gun fire in the cafeteria. We're in the hallway approaching the huge, gear-like vault door which was now wide open. There are two guards, with guns, waiting by the door.
"Wait here, I have an idea..."
"No! Wait! Sasha!" And she ran off toward them, I remained hidden behind some supply boxes in the darkened hallway.
"Hey!" I hear her call out to them, "I think I found him hiding, come on! Follow me!" I peek up and see her leading them down another corridor. I catch her eye one more time before she disappears with the guards. I'll probably never see her again. I know she had always had a crush on me, that's why she had been so nice to me throughout the years. It's too bad she'll never know I didn't like her back, and that I kind of had a thing for Nick since we were kids. And she never will. I take that as my cue and I run toward the door, I can't believe I'm doing this!
"Stop!" A big voice booms behind me, I obey because I can feel his gun pointing at me. I slowly turn around, hiding my bat behind my body.
"Surrender, kid!" A guard jogs up to me and shoves his gun in my face, I think I'm going to pee my pants, but I don't budge.
"I'll kill you, kid, if you don't surrender and come with me now!" I take a deep breath and without much thought, I swing my bat at his head as hard as I can. I knock his helmet off and knock him to the ground. He's stunned. I step over him and hit him again. I hit him until he finally stops moving. I don't know to this day if I killed him or not, I'm pretty sure I did. And like a savage I strip off his security armor and take his helmet, I grab his gun and extra ammo from his pocket, one stimpak, and I log it all into my Pip-Boy. I guess I have always been a natural born killer, much like the brutal murderer I am today. I turn around and run through the threshold of the vault door into the cavern, there's an old wooden door at the end with light pouring in through the slits.
I run into the cavern, my head buzzing, this has to be a dream. I turn around to look one last time, I hear more shooting and screaming. I run faster toward the door, this is it, no going back. I pull the flimsy door open, and I'm hit with a torrent of warm, burning, bright sun light. I have never seen the sun before, I was born in that vault. I stumble out onto rocks and dirt, and I kneel down keeping my hands over my eyes for several minutes.
As my eyes finally adjust, I climb up a small incline that over looks a vast world of isolation and destruction. Every color, every shadow is so vibrant and almost burns my eyes. It's beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic at the same time. It makes me feel sick.
A rotting and pulverized Washington DC skyline floats on the horizon far to the East. There's a maze of freeway over passes right in front of my over look, most of them are crumbling to pieces with huge sections missing, having fallen to the ground 200 years ago. I feel so sheltered from this world and from our history, which is a huge understatement.
What I was taught in school was that 200 years ago there was a huge nuclear war all over the world. The US was hit pretty bad, but a good number of people were saved by huge underground vaults like mine. However, there were lots of people who didn't make it and died or were left out here to try to survive.
I have no idea if there's anyone else still living out here, or anything for that matter. From here there is no vegetation. Just dead husks of trees, jutting out of the ground like burned toothpicks and plenty of dead weeds and shrubs. Everything, everyone, and everywhere is completely dead. It makes me feel so absolutely small and insignificant I'm overwhelmed with a sense of isolation and sadness. All of my energy is sucked out of my body and I collapse to my knees. Fuck! I'll never find my dad out here! I'm doomed! I have no water, no food! I'm dead! I scream and bang my fist against a rock until it throbs. I reluctantly get up and drag myself down the side of the hill onto what's left of a road.
I look both ways several times. I'm not looking for traffic, but rather trying to decide which way my dad went. After several long minutes of trying to decide which way will take me to death faster, I settle on going left. I take a deep breath and start jogging along the disintegrating road. I jog under one of the over passes, probably 50 feet above me it creaks and groans, threatening to collapse on top of me. I stare up at it as I pass under, just to make sure.
When I drop my eyes back down I find myself in, what's left of, a neighborhood. There are a few in tact houses but most of them are skeletons or just piles of rubble. To my left, half way buried in the rubble of the closest property, I notice a small safe. There has to be something in there that might help me out here. I run over to it. Of course it's locked, but I've been getting better with my lock pick set, so I feel confident I can pop this thing open. It takes less than a minute for me to pick it. Success!
Inside I find some different ammo but no gun, several bottle caps for some reason, one bottle of purified water, Rad-Away, one stimpak, and something my Pip-Boy identifies as Jett. It comes in a little inhaler, maybe it's some sort of asthma medicine. I knew a girl who had that and she always had trouble breathing without her inhaler. I take it all and log it into my Pip-Boy. I have got to find my dad. There has to be a reason for why he's out here, and why I have to go after him.
Once I'm done with the safe, I keep running along the road out into the wastes. Out into long expanses of nothingness. At least it's October and it's not terribly hot out here, but it's not very warm either and I'm sure it will get colder at night...Which gives me maybe 8 or 9 hours of light, I'm glad it's still early.
I walk for hours, I'm really hungry and rationing the water. I'm tired enough to sit down in the shade of some rocks and dead trees. I sit there for a while just staring at the horizon, the whole city was collapsing under itself and rotting away. It's the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. As I'm having a life affirming epiphany, a little green blip pops up in my Pip Boy's radar.
My Pip-Boy 3000 is a very awesome device. First of all, it was surgically implanted onto my body when I was 10. It's a little metal sleeve on my wrist with an interactive screen, buttons, dials, and a Geiger Counter. It can tell me how healthy I am, if I have been irradiated, what I have logged into it such as weapons, ammo, apparel, aid, and miscellaneous things. And when I say logged into the Pip-Boy, I mean they actually go into the Pip-Boy. I don't understand it at all, no matter how much I study computers and technology. I don't get it and I can't figure it out. It's able to distribute the weight of the objects all over my body. But what I have always liked about it, was that I have a radar, compass, health, and condition display in my field of vision! It's tech like this that's inspired me to study it and practice with it as much as possible.
I've always known the Pip-Boy was intended for battle, especially with V.A.T.S. included into the software. Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. I've never used it in a real life situation, but I've flipped it on a few times and pretended to shoot at people when I was a kid.
I take notice to the blip after a few minutes and realize it's a friendly person or living something over to the East. It could be my dad! I jump up and start running. I reach the crest of a hill and on the other side are a few cow-like animals a few hundred yards away and a deeper valley beyond that. This could be an opportunity for food, although I'm not sure I'm ready to shoot and gut a cow to eat it. But it might be a benefit to me to take advantage of this situation.
I walk closer to the cows, as I get closer I see that they are not cows at all. They're hideous, disfigured, rotting, smelly creatures. It vaguely resembles a cow, as it has a similar shape, pus filled blisters on their utters, horns, hooves, and two heads! What the fuck?! My Pip-Boy identifies it as a Brahmin. The radiation out here must be insane for this to happen, but so far my Geiger Counter has not detected anything yet. I don't think I can kill that and eat it. It's such a disgusting disappointment. I turn around to leave and three hostile red blips pop up on my radar. Adrenaline starts to pour through me, especially when I see them come over the same hill I had, but with weapons drawn. A baseball bat, a crow bar, and the last one had a small hand gun. I turn to run, I need more distance between them and myself. I struggle to equip my gun and load it up with more ammo, and I didn't even think about the armor I had.
They're yelling and hollering got closer and closer. I turn to aim but they're already on top of me, "Raiders," my Pip-Boy reads in my visual field. I freeze and fall down on my ass. A loud gun shot rings out and one of them is suddenly shot in the head and falls to the ground. The other two turn their attention to the direction of the shot.
There's a figure approaching the Raiders. The sun is behind him, so I can't see him at all other than a blurry black silhouette casually strolling down the hill. One of them runs up the hill toward him, brandishing his gun, and he's quickly taken down with more finesse than the first. The mysterious stranger throws a knife into his neck. He has plenty of time to pull it out and clean it off before the last Raider can react. He has already shot him in the legs with his sawed-off shotgun and finally finishes him off with a shot to the face.
I'm still on my back watching everything unfold. He stares right at me and comes my way. Great, now he's going to kill me! He saunters over like a cowboy, holstering his weapon, his face reaches the shadows and I can finally see it. He's wearing goggles on his forehead, his dirty-brown hair is perched over the lenses, a leather jacket with clearly homemade metal armor plating on his shoulders, filthy denim pants, and boots. He is the most attractive man I have ever met in my entire life.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can smell him from 10 feet away, he's dirty and scruffy, but he's got all of his teeth as far as I can tell and they're in pretty good shape. He's extraordinarily pretty. He smiles at me and reaches a hand out to me, I suddenly become very self-aware of the torrents of blood rushing to my groin. Why now?!
I reluctantly take his hand and he pulls me up to my feet, "Thanks...Mr...?"
"DiNozzo...Tony. Tony DiNozzo...Jr...Tony DiNozzo Jr.," looking pleased with himself, pulls a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket, and lights it while cupping his hand over the flame.
"What are you doing out here, vault-dweller? You're going to get yourself killed, you know?"
"Long story short, my dad left the vault, I was kicked out too, and now I have to find him out here. Why aren't you trying to kill me too, like those guys?" I point to the corpses.
"That wasn't my plan...I saw you a few hours ago leaving your vault and walking out this way, I followed you because I...Considered robbing you," he blows smoke away from my face.
"Are you?"
"Nah, not anymore. I just can't bring myself to harm you in anyway for some reason. I can tell you have worse things going for you right now...You're so pale and clean, you stand out like a sore thumb. So what's your name?"
"Tim McGee," I reach to shake his hand, he takes it and smiles,
"Well, Tim McGee, nice to meet you. Look, I can get you to the nearest city and you can ask around if anyone has seen your dad. It's the closest place to your vault so he probably hit it up, if he's not still there," he drops his cigarette butt to the ground and twists it into the dirt with his boot.
"Hey, thanks! Why are you helping me so much?"
"Lets just say...I see something in you and I want to help you."
"Alright," I chuckle.
"Do you have any armor? You're going to need it if you're living out here in The Capital Wasteland."
"Um...I do actually!"
"Put it on, and lets go!" I throw on my armor and helmet that I stole from the guard. Tony laughs at it and pulls on the helmet chin strap.
"That'll do for now, we'll get you something better later," he laughs and pats me on the back, it made my shoulder tingle up to my scalp, "Come on."
"So, how old are you anyway?" He asks as we begin walking.
"Uh...20. How old are you?"
"You look younger than that," he squints his eyes at me and a slow smile creeps up on his face, "But I'll take your word for it...I'm 26."
His smile fades and he stares stoically to the South East toward this city he claimed of, I can't wait to finally find my dad and get back home.
(To Be Continued)