A Rose Among Thorns

12 | The Glowing Sea

They found an unused hazmat suit in a bunker some family had built in preparation for the bombs. By the lack of use in the room, it looked like the family hadn't been able to use it.

Briar Rose felt uncomfortable being the only one taking precautions. Nick had reassured her repeatedly that he didn't need a hazmat suit because the radiation wouldn't affect him. That didn't make it any less awkward as they headed south with her looking like she prepared to walk on the moon and him in his usual clothes. With Dr. Amari's advice, they had also stockpiled some Rad-X and RadAway for her to use if needed.

The Commonwealth didn't have the most pleasant scenery but as they headed further south to where the bomb had landed over 200 years ago, the landscape grew exceedingly worse. The sky grew green and hazy, to where she couldn't even see twenty yards in front of her. The earth was craggy and broken, and dead trees still leaned crookedly from the shock wave. Nick had to help her climb up and down the rugged earth.

There was a lot of glowing, bubbling pools of some thick liquid, like lava—she and Nick were careful to skirt around the pools, knowing they had to be radiated. The few structures they came across were blasted apart or half-buried under the ground being uprooted. The Geiger counter on her Pip-Boy constantly clicked. Briar Rose thought she had emerged out of Vault 111 into a desolate wasteland; this was a wasteland.

Once the landscape started to turn more hazardous, they were bombarded by creatures: many Stingwings, Bloatflies, and Bloodbugs; two, sometimes three Radscorpions at once; Feral Ghouls climbing out of the radiated lava. Being irradiated made everything much stronger. They once ducked into the ruins of a crashed airplane to kill a Deathclaw—it was too big to be able to reach them.

Every chance they got, she and Nick found shelter to rest, either in a destroyed shack, a concrete bunker, or a half-buried church. They figured venturing into the Glowing Sea would be tough, but they hadn't expected the fight to be this severe. Often, as she leaned against Nick's shoulder, she took a quick nap. Nick had said he didn't get tired, but she could feel his tense posture relax under her as they took a moment to recover.

Briar Rose wasn't sure how long they had traveled when the ground began to ascend and something huge and uneven loomed ahead of them.

"That must be the crater," Nick said.

She released a heavy sigh of relief—almost there. Hopefully the inside wasn't worse than outside the crater. Nick kept a firm grip on her hand as they climbed up the jagged rocks and broken earth as they made themselves a path. They stopped at the top of the crater's lip before it rolled down to look around.

The bomb had made a crater hundreds of feet deep and wide. The bottom glowed with green light, like there was some kind of radiated liquid down there, but oddly obstructed. Briar Rose knew standing at the bottom made anyone feel small at looking up and seeing the crater surrounding them, like jagged teeth.

After making sure no immediate danger could be seen, they began the descent to the center. The obstruction over the liquid came into view as they went further down; she found it to be wooden and metal structures built over the radiated liquid—built by hand. She gaped at them; how could humans possibly live out here?

Nick stopped. "I should've known better..."

"Known what?" she asked.

"Children of Atom."

"Who are they?"

"Complete idiots. They believe the bomb was sent down by a god named Atom and worship him; the radiation left behind is a hint of his power. Sounds to me like radiation has rotted what little brains they had." He looked at her. "We need to be careful; they're usually hostile to non-believers."