Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 1 Part 1

"War. War never changes.

From the dawn of time, to the apocalypse that devastated the world in the latter half of the twenty-first century, it's all the same. Wars fought over competing ideals, for land or resources, or even over petty grievances, it's all the same.

People, young people, die under the orders of those sitting safe at home. At least, that's how it was until flames erupted from the skies.

The methods may change. The places, the weapons, the factions and the nations, but it always amounted to the same thing. Death.

What if it could change? What if we could stop war? Maybe not all of them. Maybe not for long, but what if we could make a difference? Just once. What if we could stop the death and destruction? Just once.

That's where you come in, my friend. That's your job.

We don't want to lay everything on your shoulders, but we don't have the time. We wish we didn't have to send you out there alone, but we have to. Because we no longer have the patients."

-+-

The light felt painful. Even with closed eyes, she could feel the searing heat of it, pricking at eyeballs that rolled and moved around in sockets that felt like a metric tonne of sand had lodged there, grinding away the precious, viscous flesh. She didn't want to open her eyes. Didn't want to expose them to the sun's heartless rays. Didn't want to wake from the dream that had been repeating, repeating, repeating.

Her hand moved, of its own volition, to cover her eyes and the pain, however brief, subsided. Still she didn't open her eyes, testing her body. Curling her toes in her boots. Flexing her fingers. She wondered why her left arm felt so heavy. Why, every time she moved it, she felt a tingle, a rush of something chemical and electrical running up and down her forearm?

"Well, looks like somebody is finally waking up." A woman's voice that, at first, sounded like an out-of-tune radio, squawking in some strange electronic dialect, then became more clear and human. "I could have sworn you were a goner there, for a while. Now, you just take your time, Patience. There's no rush. Here, have a drink."

Sour tasting plastic was pressed to her lips and she realised how dry and flaked they were. Tepid water dribbled onto those dry lips and she drank. It tasted filthy, but it also tasted like life. She couldn't have appreciated it more if it had come straight from a cool mountain spring. The water and the plastic detached from her lips and she found herself leaning upward, wanting more. Needing it.

"Ah, ah, ah. Not too much there, Patience. Don't want you throwing up in this fine dwelling we have here." The sound of plastic moving against plastic as a cap was returned to a bottle. "You'd been out in the sun too long, girl. Near dried into a husk by the time I found you. Damn if you wouldn't have left a beautiful corpse, though!"

"Where ..." It was little more than a croak. A cracked, feeble attempt to talk not helped by cactus needle scratching attacking her throat. She tried to cough. "Where?"

She pushed herself up by the elbows and tried to sit. An explosion of colours, a swirling maelstrom and a jackhammer put paid to that idea. Slumping onto her back once more, she tried opening her eyes, shaded by her arm. Blurred, distorted, inflamed, like looking at the bottom of a pool with a thousand watt arc lamp thrust in her face. She saw nothing.

"I found you just about half-a-mile back, just lying on the ground. Thought you were dead. I was gonna steal everything you had. Til you grabbed me." The bottle cap unscrewed again and more water dripped into her mouth. "I tell you, Patience, almost dead and you still near broke my wrist. You are one strong lady. Pretty, too."

"Why ... why do you keep calling me 'Patience'?" It still felt like a porcupine was trying to climb out of her throat, but she could, at least, manage a few words.

"Well, I figured that was your name. You kept mumbling it while you were out. 'Patience', 'Patience', 'Patience'." The voice seemed to move away and then return. "It is your name, right?"

"No. It wasn't 'Patience', it was 'patients'. From my dream." It was funny. That dream had been clear as day a second ago and now it seemed like a dream of a dream.

"If Patience isn't your name, what do I call you?"

"My name is ... is ..." It was a struggle. She could feel a name, her name, dancing out of reach, spinning a waltz with other memories behind a wall of impenetrable glass. Seen, felt, but imprisoned from her. Separated. "I can't remember. I can't remember anything."

She tried opening her eyes again, forcing herself through the pain and discomfort. Flickering eyelids like an old movie projector letting light through in a ditter-ditter-ditter of images. She screwed her eyes closed and tried again. Ignoring pain, and jackhammers, cacti spines and exploding rainbows, pushing past maelstroms and porcupines, she forced her eyes open. Struggled to sit up.

"If your name isn't Patience, but you can't remember your name, I figure I'll just keep calling you Patience until you do remember." The woman was coming into focus now. A toothy smile being the clearest image.

Patience reached out and found a wall with her hand. Or was it a wall? She squinted. It wasn't a wall, it was a sand coloured boulder. In fact, they seemed to be sheltered within the gap between several boulders, a rusted, corrugated sheet of tin draped as a haphazard roof. Stumbling, she meandered to the gap between the boulders and looked out.

It was a horror.

A wasteland of ash grey, sand scoured rocks and lifeless husks of trees. Scrub bushes and fingers of grass were few and far between. The sky, a hazy, sickly yellow, darkening to a mucous green. A billboard, half-burned, half-discoloured, washed out, peeling, proclaimed 'A giant leap for Nuka-Cola. A Quantum leap!' and, in front of the billboard, a line of cars. Abandoned, rusted and sand-blasted. Rotting hulks of a decadent society, now dust.

"Where the hell am I?" She collapsed to her knees, hands falling to the ground, gripping the colourless, sterile dirt.