Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 84: Deadlands

The Screaming Craters awaited.

The Red Menace was a hellish greeting to it's scourge. Through the notorious screaming firestorms and their ravaging red tornadoes birthed from the oil field guerilla strikes, the three craters that blemished the land harbored Blood Rock, the deep home of the Dark Bloods.

There, the accursed caves, known as the Veins, burrowed into the Earth around the borders of the craters, linking together in a mountainous, man-made honeycomb system that sang with the Earth's furious tectonic movements from below. It was a foreboding, haunting place to be.

He shouldn't be here.

Would they run him through the vault death race if he turned ghoul?

Slumped in the back of the slave wagon pulled by the dreaded bloodbeasts, his arm hanging limply over the rear ramp, the Initiate dragged his hand over the dead terrain, dragging his soul over dead hopes. Every now and then, his hand would catch on a lone rock or a stray tuft of wilted grass shooting up through the craggy Earth, adding variety to the otherwise nondescript soil. This alone kept him sane.

His fellow slaves had halved in numbers reaching the hallowed Deadlands that sprawled beyond the Bloodlands. If it wasn't the radiation that bled them out, it was the raiders that grew bored and hungry. The worst combination in this grotesque breed of raiders.

It had been over a week since the Brotherhood of Steel had stormed the skies and thundered across the forward camps. Over a week since the Initiate had tasted freedom only to have it snatched from his reach like the ploy of a cruel master. He would be long dead or feral by the time his brothers and sisters could reach him now.

Not even Paladin Danse could save him.

The wagons of slaves and their masters were rolled on their treads past the marching hordes of warriors and hunters on their way to war. Bloodhunt, they called themselves. The Dark Blood army. The bloodthirsty warriors of the Blood Children, born of the Dark Deep, where the Earth's blood rose to mate with the blood of the children of the apocalypse, giving life to the Dark Blood that fed them all and guided them into the depths of madness.

That was what Mole told the Initiate.

"The Dark Blood is only the vessel of the fury it feeds to the soul."

Blood, blood, blood. One would think these madmen worshipped it.

The slaves barely had the will to watch as these warriors amassed into a curdling army and marched to the blood beat of their untamed hearts. The purpose in their bearing was chilling, devoid of the howling, roaring bloodlust that befell the Dark Bloods in battle. These warriors were silent but for the deep battle hum they conjured in step as one moving mass.

The Initiate caught the gaze of a heavily helmed warrior, the dark eyes glittering with murder through the shadow of his mask. An unearthly shiver crept up his spine and settled into the pit of his shrivelled stomach. That one anonymous warrior took up the mantle of the pure menace these raiders-these demented human beings-could inflict on not only the Commonwealth, but the world.

Because of their specimens, they couldn't die. A glorious death in battle could be rewarded with reincarnation, given the body was intact. Their army respawned, rebirthed into thrice psychotic, thrice powerful, inhuman beings out for sweet revenge and grim redemption. Nothing could stop a burned warrior hellbent on vengeance and glory.