Radiated

(This is the two pieces I made after playing- no, experiencing- Fallout 3. I wanted to get more in touch with the atmosphere and setting, that of a bleak, dark, and cynical human race struggling to stop its self-destruction- an amazing feat, to say the least, and it shows. I recently found out that this game is being 'taught' in college courses alongside the first two. I mean, professors holding week-long discussions on player morality, personality imprinting, narrative decisions, etc. This is intriguing stuff, and I love every bit of it.

-Geist)

The sun had begun to set as the two bandits strolled down the swollen, cracked, and trash-congested highway.

The first's beaten and duct-taped hunting rifle squeaked with each step across the grayed and decaying pavement, accompanying the rattle of her stapled and rusted tin-plate armor.

The second's pistol beat rhythmically against his thigh, the ragged leather cord keeping it attached to his faded and oil-stained work jeans in desperate need of repair. He tended to forget about it when the two would stop to rest under bridges, in broken houses, amongst rubble, anywhere, for lack of sleep.

The first stopped and looked ahead. Automobile carcasses lay strewn ahead of them, highway dividers that served to separate the road crumbled all over it. There was little hope of finding friendly camps for a long while. There never was much hope to begin with.

The second stopped next to her, observed the scene, breathed in and relaxed, saw a flash, and almost said something before the sound of the rifle shot reached his ears and the first bandit's head had popped like a ripe grapefruit.

The second bandit fell in unison with the decapitated body of his friend, felt the tickle of something warm and wet on the side of his face, scrambled to get back up again.

Alone, alone, alone. They had been alone. Now they was he. He was singular. Hope was gone now. Nothing left. Nothing but a highway and the cars and the glint of trash metal and a man wearing a white-blue hockey mask, walking up the road in the heat. The bandit heard him load another round.

Panic. She's dead. Defense. Pistol. Pistol? The leather cord had ripped and now the weapon had been lost amongst the scrap around his feet. No defense.

Run.

Run fast.

He turned and took three strides before the sound of another shot rang out and he felt his left knee collapse in on itself.

Red and shock and anger and fear rushed into the bandit's head as the parts of his legs exposed by his unkempt jeans scraped against the blacktop. No, no, no, alone, no defense, no running. Where where where.

He dragged himself into the shade of a nearby concrete divider and bled. The sun burnt and scorched his weary face now. Life and space and the world all seemed to dribble away at a set tempo, in time with each footfall of death. Each step was closer, heavier. The bandit looked up.

The man came slowly forward, slinging his rifle over his back. His hockey mask was mostly white, but had been carved into so that the original wood below the paint came through. The bandit noticed that they seemed to be logical cuts. He noticed they looked like a tally. There was a sudden abject fear from deeper within, and the bandit tried to talk.

Then there was the shine of a knife as it was pulled from the man's pocket.

"No," the bandit croaked. He managed to push his body up from the force of one arm. He started to limp away, head not bothering to turn back.

"No, no, no."

The footfalls behind him grew faster. He limped more urgently.

"No no no no no NO!"

There was a sound as if the wind had rustled past him, and there was a sting below his neck, and he fell to the pavement, released.

The color of the world melted away and the bandit found himself swimming in a sea of nothingness. Not sleep. Not death. Something else. Perception went on and off, little fluctuations appeared as the neurons fired off sporadically in his head. He stayed there for minutes, hours, days, a willing vegetable to the flow of things. He couldn't remember when he had rested this well. He couldn't remember anything at all.

Then it was like a switch was turned on and it went from a dark ocean to burning bright needles of light; the beat of life started up again and it was black and white at first but then the color hit him so he just laid there, closing and opening his dried and scabby eyes, letting the sunset in, pushing it out.

The bandit tried to breathe and his lungs heaved blood and water; he tried to move and his nerves exploded in machine-gun spurts of pain.

Closing and opening.

Closing and opening.

He tried to conceive shapes, but they twisted away into something else everytime he thought he had it pinned down- a car became a dog became a sign became a smell. His hearing was nothing but a high-pitched ring that resounded infinitely between each side of his empty head. His eyes rolled back and forth uselessly behind their lids, following the screeching wavelengths behind them.

Closing and opening.

Then, a break, a snap, reality oozed back into place and began to set in.

There was nothing above him, only the grey clouds tinted an angry orange from the angled sun.

Rising? Setting? Time. He needed the time.

With reality came instincts.

Survive. Get up. Move. His legs refused to and his left shoulderblade began to slide out of place. There was a squelch and a pop and the bandit could hear his tendons shearing from the bone as he fell face-first into the asphalt again. When he screamed into the highway it was less out of pain and more out of frustration.

With instincts came feelings.

Hunger. He was hungry. His stomach gurgled even as the body that housed it fell apart, piece by piece. Thirsty, too. A desperate thirst. He felt the little river of blood from his cracked lip pooling at the cusp of his chin and his blown out knee and his shoulderblade was pushing too hard on his skin. He heard a sound like frail paper being ripped in two, and then a wave of heat as the blood fanned out over his back.

With feelings, oddly enough, came apathy.

He took his right arm and began to pull.

It hurt and he didn't care.

He was doomed and he didn't care.

He knew his rawhide shirt porbably wouldn't protect his stomach from the grind of the pavement for long and he didn't care.

He knew he probably didn't have the energy to get more than a few hundred feet and he didn't care.

He knew he was dying and he didn't care.

About half a kilometer away there was a dog padding around the broken cars and shattered highway dividers. The owner, a man abandoned by the world, didn't care where it went during the day, but as long as it came back to the overpass at night, he kept it fed and watered. The pair had food from a single pear tree the man kept alive from a stream that had formed in the gutters beneath the road. The dog was tired of fruit, though. It desired something more primal. It felt the need to be a carnivore.

So when it found a dead body a few hundred feet away from the stream, warm from the setting sun, it feasted to its heart's content.