Radioactive Grace 6: Snack Run
This is the continuation of a Fallout 3/New Vegas Let’s Play. You can read Part 1 here, or go to the index page.
August 18, 2277
All my life people have been telling me what a bright girl I am. Daddy. Mr. Brotch. Amata. But smart isn’t testing well. Smart isn’t remembering facts. Smart is asking questions.
Questions like, “Why does Megaton need these big-ass walls?” and “Why is everyone armed all the time?”
You’re dumb, Grace. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Yesterday I take Moira up on her offer to check out the supermarket, because hey, I can get her what she wants and scavenge some canned food to trade for caps, right? It’s not far. Hour or so walk from Megaton.
On the edge of a huge-ass city. That’s DC. My first thought was, “Why don’t the residents of Megaton move out of trash-burg and into the city?”
Then I hear gunshots and I do something stupid.
I run towards them.
To see.
It’s over by the time I get to the parking lot. A trader of some kind, I guess, shot up pretty bad. Dead or soon to be. Nothing I can do. Not too far away, two dead guys, look like they’re blown up or burnt or something.
I turn away. Makes me sick, looking at them. I almost have a panic attack. More on that, later. I don’t want to see them, don’t want to think. So I just… go inside.
Somehow, amazingly, the lights are still on.
This place is huge. The entire vault could probably fit in here. I try to imagine the way it was, before the war, seeing this place packed with people.
Most of the shelves are picked clean, but I find a refrigerated unit up front packed with food, and in the back is some kind of pharmacy, along with one of those security robots. Thankfully disabled, because I’m probably not supposed to be there.
I don’t know how long I’m back there for, just poking around, gathering medicine, looking in boxes. Still feel a little dazed, when suddenly the PA kicks on.
I hear laughing, joking. They know I’m in here. They saw me come in. They’re going to do terrible things if I don’t surrender, terrible things if I do. They want my fear, and I give it to them.
I sit frozen for a second, then get up to lock the door, barricade it, anything. My eyes fall on that robot, and the terminal next to it.
It’s a move of desperation, but it’s all I got. The encryption is simple… Amata and I have been hacking vault systems since we were ten. I boot it up, launch the maintenance program, and the thing comes to life.
I let it go out there, close the door, and wait for the screams to stop.
Silence.
I creep out, trying to guess which way it went, so I don’t have to see any of the bodies. I’m so preoccupied about this that I don’t see the raider until he’s shot me.
It feels like a fireball exploding in my stomach. As I fall, the gun I don’t realize I’m holding — the one Amata gave me — goes off.
I’m not dead. The armor protected me, dulled the impact so his shot was painful instead of mortal. He wasn’t so lucky.
I stand and I stare and I go all cold inside. And I remember, running through the vault, escaping, running past guards and radroaches. I remember Officer Mack interrogating Amata at the behest of her father, I remember rushing in to stop him, I remember beating him with my baseball bat until he was red and still and barely human looking.
The panic wells up in me until I’m full and there’s nowhere else for it to go and it just… stops. No, it’s still there, but it doesn’t bother me. Like I have an intellectual awareness of my trauma. I killed a man. Two men. Activated the robot that killed… I don’t know how many more… and I feel nothing.
I take his gun. I take all their guns. And their caps. And then I head outside.
It’s dark. I find the dead trader and take everything I can find in the dark, then walk back to Megaton.
The air is still. The night is silent.
Craterside is closed when I get there, and I should be tired, but it doesn’t matter. I walk through the empty town to the common sleeping area where non residents congregate.
Eventually I fell asleep. No dreams. None that I remember. Too tired to dream, maybe. Just 24 hours before I was going to bed in my room down in the vault, and now my whole world is gone, and I have to learn the rules of this new one.
Now it’s morning. Almost noon by the light coming in through the window. I eat some of the food I’ve found… I don’t even know what it was, I wasn’t paying attention… and write this down, before I forget. After this, I’m off to Moira’s.
Technical Notes:
Some of you who are familiar with the game may notice me taking a few liberties here and there for the sake of story flow. I don’t do it often.
I’m liking Fellout’s visuals, but nighttime is too dark to really do anything. Will look into mods to fix this.
Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.
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