FO4 | Book 0: The Diaries of Anarchy ✔️

March 13, 2263

I had a bag slung over my shoulder with what little belongings I owned. I traveled so much these days, I kept 'em on me. My home was wherever I decided to lay my head at night.

The sky was gray overhead, threatening rain. I could smell it on the wind. I was wary at first — I kept my bottle of Rad-X in mind just in case this turned out to be a rad storm.

The caravan in front of me moseyed on down the road, and I trailed behind them, keepin' an eye out for a place I could find salvageable supplies. The buildings around the area looked like they had been ransacked, though. I knew I wasn't gonna find anything of use in these buildings.

"You travel often?" asked the woman in metal armor beside me. She had a buzz cut and carried an automatic rifle.

"Me? Yeah, every chance I get."

"You look like the type. You ever been a caravan guard?"

"Yep. I've been a delivery boy, a caravan guard, a chem runner, and most recently a mercenary."

"Mercenary, huh? You take on any tough jobs?"

"Mostly pest control around the local settlements. If Yiao Guai are gettin' too close to a town, if Molerats have infested a crop, or if Mirelurks are spawnin' in someone's water supply, I take the job. So far, the hardest one I've dealt with was the raider scum givin' people trouble out in the West Commons. Stupid bastards..."

"Heh. Sounds like Minutemen work to me. You're gonna put 'em out of business."

"I respect the Minutemen and what they do, but I wouldn't wanna run with that outfit. It don't pay. Trust me, I've asked. They're all volunteers, and as noble as that is, I gotta make money somehow."

"Someone like you needs money? What would you spend it on?"

"Food, cigarettes, books —"

"Books? You read?"

I shot her a look. "I'm not illiterate or anything if that's what you're gettin' at."

"I'm just saying, you don't strike me as the well-educated type." She chuckled.

"Looks are deceivin'."

"What do you read?"

"I read history mostly. It's fascinatin' to me how well adjusted and organized people were before the Bombs. It's a real fuckin' shame that it was all lost to human greed. An even bigger shame that people can't recover from that and take everything back from the Super Mutants and the goddamn raiders."

"Raiders will always be a problem, even if you eradicated every mutant on the face of the earth."

"Because everyday people are the real monsters..." I muttered.

She looked me up and down. "You've been through some shit, huh? Ain't we all..."

We walked along in silence after that, and I slowed my pace to let her trail ahead of me. I dug through my bag for a pack of cigarettes and my flip lighter, but the first droplet of rain hit my cheek. Damn, I thought. I decided against the cigarette — it was gonna wind up soggy.

I was only accompanying this caravan because I needed to get to the next town to check for work, but I had wandered too far north without findin' a soul. Our destination was The Slog, an all ghoul settlement that stayed pretty quiet for the most part. The owner of this caravan was a ghoul, and he claimed to have a lot of buyers at The Slog that looked forward to him coming around once a week.

It started drizzling, and I wished I had a thicker coat.

"Time to find some shelter before it starts coming down faster," said the caravaner. "We'll try this shed over here." He pointed to a red shed on a hillside.

We took cover inside while the pack Brahmin had to stand out in the rain. I saw a specific assortment of tools in the corner of the shed and a ball cap that triggered some deeply buried memory within me.

My dad used to wear a ball cap when he'd go outside. He had a set of tools that looked a lot like these old rusted ones on the floor.

I peeked out the window of the shed to an old house that now lay in shambles, and my heart clenched.

"Hold my bag," I said absently to the caravan guards. I set the bag on the floor against the wall and walked over to the house.

This was really it. I felt so... ghostly, standin' there in the rain and lookin' at my old house. I hadn't been here since the day we left, when I was fourteen. Hard to believe that it had been eight years.

Against my better judgment, I searched just beyond the yard. It was the last place I saw my parents before I turned my back. I found their skeletal remains lying in the prickly, dry grass with not even a gun on either of them.

And, you know, I thought it woulda tore me up lookin' at them like that. It didn't. What I felt was almost like pity. I looked over my shoulder at our burnt house and shook my head. I couldn't think of a whole lot of good memories there.

I spent the remainder of the day diggin' their graves and layin' them to rest, good and proper. Then, I stood there in the middle of the night, soaked to the bone, just talkin' to them.

"Why'd you have to be like that, Dad? Why'd you have to go and make life so goddamn unbearable? And Mom... Why didn't you just leave him and take me and Guy with you? Don't give me that bullshit about marital duties. Could anyone truly love someone so bitter? Damn... If only you could see how we turned out."

The silence settled between me and the graves and dragged on with the sound of the ocean down the hill behind the house crashing against the shore.

People like Guy and Nick wanted me to "settle down" and have kids and get a "real job." But I'll be damned if I made the same mistakes my parents did. If I had a family of my own, I'd be so goddamn terrified that I'd have to go through this shit again — this loss, this heartache. I didn't want it. 'Cause I knew how these things ended. God would wait 'til you were at your happiest, then he'd take something or someone away from you. I laughed in God's face and flipped him the bird, because I found a way to cheat His system and live life with all its pleasures without the threat of loss loomin' over my shoulder.

I'd always been a reincarnation kinda guy anyway. If I got to choose, I hoped that my mother woulda came back as a regular badass that stood up for herself and took no shit. As for my father, I kinda hoped that he came back as a Radroach.

And I laughed. I laughed my ass all the way back to the shed.