Fallout 1. Prologue: A Rude Awakening

**A Rude Awakening**

"_My friend," the voice said. "Don't be mislead. You're wrapped in chains indeed, and you hold the key in your hand… but you will rot here. The most oppressive cell is the one without a lock."_

Jack Augustine lay with his eyes open wide, the embrace of sleep eluding him still. Hands crossed behind his matted black hair, he stared up past the rusted skeleton of an old billboard. Thousands upon thousands of stars dotted the blackness. They bathed the dark landscape with a kind of soft white light. The world was quieter now.

He exhaled, a long and slow breath. Three days. It'd been three days since he escaped the slave pen of fucking Paradise Falls. Three days since he'd celebrated his newfound freedom, three days since he'd realized the price he would pay for that freedom for the rest of his life. A lifetime of hiding and a constant struggle for survival in the wastes, that was his prize for escaping. Not to mention watching his best friend's brains splattered against the gate of the slaver town. Was it all worth it?

He didn't have much time to dwell. He saw a black shadow blot out the stars and then felt a white-hot pain in his side. Screaming with pain and blinking tears from his eyes, he rolled over and saw a lean figure standing over him, dressed in ratty leather garb and aiming some sort of revolver at him.

"Get the fuck up." His breath reeked of alcohol.

"Who-who are you?"

"I said get the fuck up!"

Jack got up. He stood, clutching at his bleeding side and gasping for air. Thoughts of reaching for the screwdriver in his pocket fleetingly crossed his mind, but he wouldn't stand much of a chance against these gun-slinging assholes.

"What'cha name, pretty boy?" this voice was distinctly female, and although she was probably the one holding the gun barrel against the base of his skull… she sounded pretty hot.

"Jack," he replied, still trying to find a breath. "Jack Augustine." He knew better than to lie. Chances were that the slavers had already posted a bounty on his head, and these junkie bandit types didn't think twice about such petty things as murder or human trafficking.

"Augustine… say boy, I think we've been looking for an Augustine. Ray, hand me the flashlight." The excitement among the group was building and they started whispering.

Jack squeezed his eyelids shut together as the harsh yellow light concentrated on his face. The leader of the raiders, holder of the flashlight, let out a long whistle and the others cheered.

"It's him alright. Bag 'im up!"

A sharper pain at the back of his head. A white light exploded inside Jack's eyelids, and then all went quiet.


	2. Chapter 1: An Unlikely Companion

**An Unlikely Companion**

Light.

Harsh light flooded in through Jack's eyelashes. He opened his eyes and was immediately blinded by the hot Wasteland sun. Slamming them shut again, he tried to speak. Only a dry, rattling breath escaped his cracked lips.

_Water._ He needed water. All he could taste was blood in his mouth. A faint buzzing in his ears grew into voices. He tried opening his eyes again.

He was curled up in a small wire cage. He was not chained down or bound in any way, just confined to this cage by a small padlock. Thoughts of trying to break the lock and escape entered his mind, and fled just as quickly as he noticed the patrol of raiders encircling the cage. There were more than he remembered last night, five or six in total. Jack ran his hands through his hair. The back of his head was covered in sticky, semi-dried blood. To add to the fun, he found himself completely devoid of any clothing.

"So you're some kinda trader, that right?" said the voice. It was the voice belonging to the leader of the men who captured him last night.

"Heh heh, only the best, my friend." Jack painfully turned his head to see. "They call me the Scarab… like the beetle! Heh heh."

Scarab was an old man. A very small old man, with a filthy red cloak wrapped around him with its ends laying sprawled across the dirt. A spotted and wrinkled hand clutched at it with long fingers, keeping it drawn tightly across his frail frame. His face was weathered and beaten, with many a scar to show. Thin white hair drifted lazily about in the wind, matched by thick white eyebrows.

However, his eyes betrayed the appearance of a normal old man. One was blue and one was green, but both sparkled with the mischievous fire of a youth up to no good. His lips gave way to a huge smile spotted with yellowed teeth that stretched from ear to ear. The man had a funny air about him.

"Scarab, huh? You look like another pathetic old asshole to me. If you're really a trader, whatcha got to sell?"

"Ha! Why I reckon just a little bit o' everything, son. Guns, clothes, food, and the best… supplements you'll find! And I'll make you a deal, hoo boy will Scarab make you a deal!"

"I bet you will." The leader made a quick motion and there was a glint of reflected sunlight from his side as he raised a pistol. The others sniggered and similarly drew their weapons.

"Well now boy, let's not get unfriendly about it! Say, what might that be in that little ol' cart of yours, hey boy?" The old man looked directly into the cage and Jack felt a chill pass through his body.

"Just a new pet of mine. He's awful hungry, maybe we might could let 'im out and show you some of his tricks." More sinister chuckling.

"Oh, that's quite alright my boy. Say, you were lookin' to make that deal now weren't you?"

"Yeah. You just lay what you got on the ground right here, real slow like."

"Alright then. You want it?" he moved faster than Jack had ever seen anybody move, "You got it!"

Then came the sound Jack Augustine knew all too well, the sound that had been forever burned into his memories and his dreams; the sound of automatic gunfire. The combination of the rapid, air-splitting cracks and the squelching, skull-splitting _thud_s. Before the raiders could aim their pistols, they were rent apart and droplets of scarlet blood showered over the ground. Jack shielded his face and looked through the space between his arms to see the raider's leader fall to his knees, trying to catch the wet coils of his intestines as they fell to the ground with a sickening _plop_.

Jack kept screaming long after the bullets stopped.

**. . . . .**

_Jesus shit that boy can holler!_ thought Scarab as he tucked his submachine gun back into the belt of his cloak. Never in his life had he heard a man scream like that, not even when being torn apart by one of those fucking yellow-skinned monsters. He looked around at the carnage before him. Six. Six bodies strewn about the blood-soaked earth before him, around a very scared two-headed cow and an even more scared boy in a cage. One of the bodies lay close to him, its face caved in by the force of the bullet. He'd tried to be the hero, rushing an old man with nothing but an old tire iron. Scarab kicked the lifeless corpse over onto its front with contempt. He shook the sleeves of his cloak off of his wrinkled forearms and held his palms up towards the sky. His hands were shaking again. He was getting too old for this shit.

The boy finally shut up. Scarab took a long look at him. He squinted with one eye, trying to see out of the other. The good one. The green one, he supposed.

Kid looked no older than his late teens. Tears still streamed over his face and his mangy black hair was covered in blood. He was shaking, and lean muscle showed through his tanned skin. He must be one of those escaped slaves, to be in that kind of shape and still be such a pussy. Poor boy had probably been through a lot, but then, who nowadays hadn't? Scarab had seen more than his fair share of dead people, yes sir-ee he had. Made a good bit of them dead too. He didn't know how old he was, but he figured it to be around sixty.

"Woo-ee boy, I'll say, you're sure as hell naked, ain't you?" Scarab said as he forced another cracked smile. The boy said nothing, just looked down at the floor of his prison.

"Not a talker? Boy, that's quite alright I say, quite alright. Got a name?"

Nothing.

"Well now, well now… they call me Scarab. Like the beetle! Ha ha."

"I – I know."

"Ha, you CAN talk boy! I knew it, I just sure as shit knowed it, boy." he smiled even wider, his face looking like it was going to crack. "So where you from?"

"Paradise Falls."

"Oh ho, one of them slave types! Well boy, you want outta that cage or you gonna stay in there for them mole rats to pick at?"

"Please."

Scarab limped towards the cage. He reached back into one of his cloak's inner pockets, pulling out a weapon. This time it wasn't the submachine gun, it was an antique police-issue pistol from before the war. He raised it to shoulder height, squinted one eye, and fired two shots at the lock on the cage. He heard the boy yelp again, like a wounded dog. Gun shy, that's all he was. The door swung open and the naked kid clambered out.

"Well ain't you gonna say thank you? Scarab saved your hide, you bet he did!"

"Thank you. You said you had clothes, didn't you?"

"If you got the caps, you betcha!"

The slave kid looked down at his feet and kicked at the dirt. Scarab suppressed a scowl. The only thing he hated more than deadbeat broke-ass wanderers was raiders. But an idea trickled into his head.

"Say boy.. don't take no offense, you hear now? but you seem like you're in a bit of a fix. I got clothes, I got guns, I got everything you need out here.. and I got protection! Yes sah, Scarab's seen it all, and I was thinkin', how's about you and me join up for a little while? You ain't got a whole lot better to do now, you hear?"

The boy seemed to think about it for a while. He sat in the dirt and rubbed his tired face with his dirty hands, and after a long pause, he spoke.

"Jack."

"Say what?"

"That's my name. Jack Augustine."

Scarab smiled another one of those crooked grins.

_Fresh meat._

**. . . . .**

Scarab looked like he was up to something, but after weighing his chances, Jack decided it was better to tag along with a crooked old man with a gun than to wander this nightmarish desert, this last vestige of hell, alone and naked. He had no idea where to go, no friends, and apparently the gang of raiders and slavers he'd seen visiting Paradise Falls was hunting him now.

He removed his hands from his face and saw the old man standing in front of him with a bundle of clothing. Jack took them graciously and used one of the shirt's sleeves to dab the dirt-stained tears from his face. There was a makeshift leather pair of pants, a white but stained long-sleeved t-shirt, a rope belt with some kind of holster, and a weathered pair of boots, the kind that the cowboys in all the ancient posters and magazines wore. He dressed himself quickly and caught a wide-brimmed hat Scarab threw his way.

"Heh, there you go, boy, dressed to impress I'd say!" said the old man as he shuffled back to his pack animal. "You got a gun?"

Jack realized he didn't. He looked around the bodies lying before him and identified that of the raider's leader. Still held in his outstretched hand was that revolver, casting glints of sunlight onto the ground beside it despite the blood spattered across the barrel. Jack took it and checked the chamber. Still had six rounds. He looked around again and saw a rifle slung over the shoulder of the body furthest from a cage. He bent over and picked it up, slinging it across his back and tucking the pistol into his belt.

"Boy, boy, boy, you just the reg'lar cowboy now ain't you?" laughed the old man. He tossed a small canvas sack at the boy. "Them guns take .32 bullets, that'll be enough to last you least till we get past D.C." Jack stuffed the bag inside his pack. "And here's lunch!"

Scarab handed Jack a blackened chunk of meat. Jack realized just how hungry he was and tore eagerly into the food. It tasted funny, like fruit that had gone bad, but it was better than nothing. It burned going down his threat and he began to feel slightly queasy almost at once. Probably just the small amount of radiation that still inhabited everything in the wastes.

"Now boy, you come over here and sit beside the Scarab, yes sir-ee I'd like that!" the old man chuckled again. Jack obeyed and bit into the dry meat again before taking a seat by Scarab, leaning against a rock. The old man smiled then started eating his own food.

After they had eaten in silence, Jack felt compelled to speak.

"Where are you going to go?"

"Well, heh, that's the question for everybody nowadays, ain't it son?"

"Yeah, but you've got to have some kind of a plan."

The old man leaned in close. His breath was hot and bore the putrid smell of that meat.

"You want to know my plan? You really want to know?" His voice was alarmingly clear now, none of the wheezing and friendliness of his formal tone.

"Yeah, I do."

"There's a place. Far southwest of here, only accessible by this one tunnel. Called Adams Air Force Base, yes sir-ee," he laughed and clapped his hands with delight. "It was a secret installation before the bombs fell, and word has it that it's still intact."

"What in the hell are you going to do at some old military base?"

"Them planes are old, but they're not destroyed. No, I'm reckoning there's a hangar somewhere on that base that still has some planes that haven't been scrapped for parts. It's a shot in the dark, but I'm figurin' we can get our hands on one of them whirly-birds."

"And where would you go? There's nothing but ruins. The world is dead, Scarab."

"Not so fast," and his eye took on that insane sparkle again. "I've seen a lot of people in my time boy, heard a lot of stories. More than a couple say there's a safe place far, far away from here. Maybe not even in the good ol' U.S. of A., but I say to hell with it. It's better than dying out here, right boy?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Are you going alone?"

"Heh, I don't know. That's for you to answer."

Jack looked at the ground again. It was a gamble. Crossing miles of dangerous terrain with this old man, with nothing but a _hope_ of a way out, and even then, only a _hope _of some place untouched by the Great War. He'd be much better off continuing on his way to Megaton, trying to make a home for himself here. But...

"I'm in."

"Woo-hee! That's what I wanna hear! Now boy, there's a couple of buildings still standin' not too far from here, not to goddamn far at all. We gonna shack up for the afternoon, we leave tonight!"

Jack looked towards the sky. He had a sick sensation that this would be the last time he saw that unforgiving Wasteland sun.


	3. Chapter 2: Nightfall

**Nightfall**

A voice in the dark.

"Jackie, boy, get up!"

Jack bolted upright in the dirty bed. It seemed that sleep was now too prestigious of a priveledge for him.

"What... what's going on?" He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked about in the dark. He saw the old man standing above him, fully dressed and gun at the ready.

"Aha! I told you we were leaving tonight, yes I did. Get up and get ready now, son."

"Why now? It's the middle of the damn night."

The old man bored holes through Jack's own with a menacing stare. "You wanna go galavant all over the fucking Wastes at high noon? Be my guest, I'll be taking my bullets off your corpse by tomorrow." Tension filled the room as he continued to stare straight at the nervous boy, before finally easing back into the twinkling-eyed old man.

"Breakfast is some o' them instant mashed potatoes, found a carton under the sink, yessir I did!" The old man laughed and clapped Jack on the back before leaving the dark room.

Jack waited until he heard the creaks of the stairs, then swung his feet out and stumbled out of bed. He dressed hurriedly, not wanting to piss the old man off again. _Who is he?_ he thought to himself. There was something dark, something strange, hidden behind that cracked smile and those sparkling yet deadly eyes. He panicked slightly as he looked for his weapons, but found them on the floor on the other side of the bed. In his fitful sleep, he must have knocked them off.

After readying himself, Jack headed down the stairs after the old man. Scarab was waiting patiently at the foot, a tin cup filled with that gruel in his hand. "Eat up," he said as he handed the cup to Jack, "we've got a long walk ahead of us, heh heh."

Jack took the cup and slurped it down. It had no taste and the potatoes were cold and slimy as they slid down his throat, but he was very hungry. The two went to the front door of their battered old shack and, with a reassuring nod from Scarab, opened the door.

Again, millions of stars glittered in the black velvet of the night sky. Jack had no idea that a mere two hundred years ago in this city, a single star was hard to find. They crept along in the black shadows cast by the houses, weapons drawn and listening for any sound. A long way off, there was a howl, soon joined by several more. Just as they exited the town, Jack heard a growl and a pattering of feet. He spun around just as a huge, hairless rat knocked him to the ground.

"Get this fucking thing off of me!" Jack screamed in terror as the rat wrestled to stay on top. Its breath was rank of rotting meat.

"Woo-ee! Boy, grab that pistol, finish 'im!" The boy reached into the holster at his side and drew the revolver.

Bang. The rat's front paw nearest Jack's throat exploded with blood.

Bang. It tried to breathe but only gurgled blood through the hole in its neck.

Bang. It fell lifeless to the ground as its gray brain matter spattered over the ground like rain.

Jack lay there, panting, covered in gore. The old man jumped up and down, clapping and laughing with delight. Jack let the revolver clatter to the ground, spilling the remaining three bullets into the dirt. His hands were white and shaking violently. He used the collar of his shirt to wipe some of the sticky matter from his face, then reluctantly rose to his feet. Immediately he put his hands on his trembling knees and vomited into the ground. The quick shuffling of the old man's footsteps, a hand grasping his shoulder.

"Let it out, it'll get better." The quiet coolness of Scarab's other persona made Jack shiver. He stood there, unable to look up at his newfound mentor but not wanting to look at the mass of vomit and gore at his feet. He shut his eyes and visions of the grisly murders of slaves at Paradise Falls swam beneath his eyelids.

It felt to Jack like he'd been standing there an hour, but after five minutes or so the old man pulled him upright. "Come on boy, gotta keep moving."

**. . . . .**

_That boy's hiding something, something dark, _thought Scarab, _but not very well. And he's slipping._ The young man's eyes still retained the terror of a boy left to die in the wastes, but there was something sinister, something dangerous and volatile, eating away at him. Scarab had seen the look all too often. It was dangerous. It was the look of a very angry and very violent man.

But still. The boy looked at him with tearful eyes, a storm brewing behind them. _Just a fucking mole rat._ The old man found himself hoping against hope that they would run into no raiders tonight, or the boy might have a breakdown.

He slapped that grin that he'd developed over the years back on his face. He squeezed the boy's shoulder and laughed heartily. "First kill's a tough'un, yes sir. Now unless you'd like to be Deathclaw bait I suggest we get our asses moving!"

"Alright. Sure."

The pair turned back and walked out of the town ruins. The howling in the distance had ceased. Scarab wondered how many others had been alerted by the gunshots, how many others were sniffing them out now. He thought he saw a bulky shadow move to his left as they passed a rusted out old train car, but thought nothing of it. Living in constant fear would drive a body mad.

Onward they walked, the moon shining brightly above them and the stars twinkling. As they passed a battered shack standing alone atop a hill, he smelled the famililar sweet stench of rotting meat. He drew his submachine gun, motioned for the boy to stay still, and crept towards the house. He crouched as he moved so as not to seen by any predators lurking at the windows, and his arthritic knees shot arcs of pain upwards through his body. He reached the door of the shack, the smell almost overwhelming him, and put his ear to the tin surface. Silence.

Using the barrel of his gun, he prodded open the door. Nothing lay waiting for him in the doorway, though he heard a buzzing to his right. He moved ever so slowly into the house and turned, only to spin back around and gag. Three bodies lay on the floor, soaked in blood. Two were adults, and one seemed to be just a small child. The back wall of the shack was battered in, and huge footprints covered the floor of the small dwelling. Moonlight illuminated the corpses, which had been torn apart and scavenged for food. Flies swarmed about the family, and probably had been for sometime now.

Scarab found a pile of loose papers, the ones on top fluttering in the quiet wind. He pulled a lighter from one of his inner pockets and lit the pile, left the shack, and shut the door. Not knowing what else hid in this house of horrors, he darted back down the hill as quickly as he kid. The boy's eyes were inquisitive and reflected the orange glow from the blazing shack.

"Just a Brahmin, and a nasty one at that."

"Oh." The young boy looked at his feet. Scarab wasn't a very good liar.

A red glow was creeping over the horizon to the east. It illuminated a ghostly old tower, still standing above the wreckage around it. Flickering yellow spots of light flooded from its tiny windows.

"Sun'll be up in another couple hours, son."

"What's that tower over there?"

"Why, that's ol' Allistair Tenpenny's little abode, Tenpenny Tower."

"Let's try to make it there."

The two continued down the hill and under the skeleton of an old pre-war highway. There was a grove of bare trees to their left, and Scarab could see movement among them, as well as a small and poorly concealed fire. The old man chose to skirt around the edge of a dirty pond instead of risking confrontation. After forty five minutes or so, they reached the gates of the tower. They were locked, but a voice came from the intercom box on the crude wall beside them.

"State your name and purpose."

"Louis Armstrong and Al Capone at your service, ha ha!"

"Ghouls?"

"No, just a couple tired old smoothskins lookin' for some company and a bed."

"Bullshit. Ghouls."

"Well son, I'm afraid not, but if we were, we would be highly offended, yes sir we would be!"

"You're ghouls, and you're not getting in. And if you are humans you can't afford a fucking room here anyway. Get out of here before I waste bullets on your ass."

Before there was time to respond, the intercom clicked off. Scarab didn't have time to say a word before he heard a series of metallic clicks behind him. His heart skipped a beat.

"Smoothskins, eh?"


End file.

Fallout, Adventure