Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 25: Think Fast, Shoot Faster

*WARNING*
Graphic violence (I mean it's Fallout after all...)

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Down here, the air carried an ancient, musty odor. Of dust and bones, Kelly thought darkly. The echoes seemed more hollow, more haunting, the feeling of a presence creeping up along her skin to snatch her in the dark. Those darting shadows and morphing shapes harassed the edges of her vision again, but she was learning to ignore them, only focusing on any motions across the ground for Dogmeat.

Danse balled a fist and they came to a halt. He shot a series of precise looks to Deacon and Hancock, motioning with two fingers for them to move up and form a perimeter. Kelly moved up on his flank with handgun at the ready, trying to ease her trembling aim so he wouldn't notice. She realized he was too focused on that circuit breaker right ahead, anyway.

Taking the lever in hand, he slammed it up, and the overhead lightbulbs came to life all along the passageway in illuminating succession. Clay-Crawler jerked and lifted his nailed baseball bat in combat readiness. Their immediate area was clear, but littered with feral ghoul corpses and fresh blood, pooled beneath their feet and flecked across the walls.

"Clay and I cleared a nice bloody path through here," Hancock spoke in hushed tones. "But don't count on the whole passage being cleared ahead. We speed-ran most of the way. Some ferals might still be lurking."

"At least now we'll have a better chance of seeing them," Danse responded. "I've fought in several harsh environments, but darkness has always been one of the toughest."

"Not if you know how to use it to your advantage," Deacon snuck in suggestively.

Danse made no response for that.

They moved on, passing a pre-war forklift machine, a withered skeleton still in the driver's seat, mining hat proudly perched atop the skull, coated in a thick layer of dust. Kelly approached it with forlorn reluctance, though feeling somehow drawn to it. Tattered clothes still hung on it's hollow form, and she briefly wondered who the man had once been, if he had a family, a wife and kids, and then what his last thoughts were before radioactive fallout cooked him in his place. Her mangled fingers swept through the dust on the forklift's steering wheel, as if touching the place where the man's fingers had once touched would disclose some details of his life.

It hit her like blunt force trauma, a flash in her skull that washed over her eyes in pallid detail. She was standing amidst the mundane labor of mining, the forklift active, it's engine rumbling with life. In the seat was the man, restored in flesh, filling out the clothing which was in pristine condition save for dust and sweat. She gasped, wide-eyed, as she took a step back in an attempt to absorb her surroundings. This was all before the Great War, in her time, conditioned light flooding the passage to divulge details now lost to time and decay. She could even smell that the air was fresher, lighter, only sullied by the stench of cigarette smoke and stale sweat. There were other men around her, loitering, plump from a lifestyle of leisure and overindulgence. It was surreal and overwhelming and familiar.

In a snap, she was back in the dark, staring at the skeleton, at the century's worth of dust on her fingertips as they tremored with the rock encasing her down here. Dogmeat was sitting near her feet, staring at her.

"Somethin' ain't right about this place," Hancock muttered in the edge of her consciousness.

She shot around to gauge everyone. "Did nobody else see that just now?"