Chapter 18 "Run."

The edge of The City lay in sight, night began to fall, and the rest of the crew were nowhere to be seen. Billy had been telling John something he didn’t really have the focus to listen to. When an emergency notification squeezed his arm. Almost causing him pain in his drained state. *Emergency broadcast found: listen y/n?*

“Hey, wait.” John hit the ok button and heard the faint trace of three dots, three dashes, and three dots again, repeating. “It’s an S.O.S., signal’s weak, but it must be close.”

“It’s probably automated, could have been going for years, let’s go.” John didn’t trust the tone in Billy’s voice.

“What if someone needs help?”

“Everyone needs help kid.”

“What if they heard me test that old system and are trying to reach us?” John heard a voice in his head, not the older, wiser, man this time, but the bright boy aged seven and three quarters. Reminding him that to be a good guy, you had to do good in a world that had so very little in it. “Look, I can track the signal, I can find my way back to town if I need to…” John found energy he didn’t know he had. “I’m going to check it out, I want you to come, but I’m going either way.”

“Alright kid, damn, let’s go. But if you get killed you’re telling Robco why, and if I get killed Roxy’s gonna have your balls.” Billy was only half joking. John remembered the viciously curved blades she had strapped to her thighs.

They followed the signal north. Heading through the outer edges of The City. And to John’s relief, not towards the menacing, twisted towers in the centre. His relief would be short lived.

The signal led them through the permanently shadowed blocks, growing darker by the minute. Until they heard noises, people, people screaming, and something else.

John drew his rose carved pistol, Billy cocked his assault rifle, and they moved slowly, smoothly, quietly. Sticking to the shadows, approaching the pained noises coming from the ruins ahead. Billy tapped him on the shoulder, leading them both to the second floor of an adjacent building. They crouched, hidden, and inched closer to the ruined window frames.

At first glance, the scene below seemed almost normal. Three people sat round a fire, eating, but they weren’t exactly people. They looked wrong, all wrong.

In the falling night, lit by flickering fire, John could see the hulking figures. Grotesque musculature, swollen, overgrown, not quite symmetrical. Tattered rags over putrid green skin. Their faces looked taught, skin stretched into a permanent snarling visage. Beady yellow eyes, even yellower teeth. Constantly grimacing. John looked to Billy, desperate for him to say something that made sense, he whispered. “Super Mutants.”

“What?” Billy didn’t, or couldn’t, hear him.

“I didn’t think they were real, just crazy raider stories.” He looked as terrified as John. Sounds drew their attention back to horrors below. A fourth hulking mutant brute stomped into view, it must have been ten feet tall, dragging a woman along the ground.

“It’s ok, help’s coming, it’s ok just hold on.” A man's voice shouted from the shadows, trying to keep the woman calm. John could see enough to make him out, beaten, dressed in black. His leg pinned under a chunk of rubble. The standing mutant brute lifted the woman up, frozen stiff in terror. It effortlessly ripped her clothing away, then impaled her on a spike. She screamed, the pain bringing her round. With a mere swipe of its bulging hand it broke her neck, silencing the scream. Leaving her lifeless body to cook over the fire.

The pinned man’s empty threats and curses morphed into an anguished scream. Drowned out by the tearing and chewing of barely cooked human flesh.

In that moment John missed the Vault. He’d of worked extended shifts in organic recyc if it meant sparing such horrors from eyes, ears, and nose. But it was far too late for that. He’d left the Vault behind, he’d taken Rosie’s code, and here he was. With the opportunity to save a stranger, as others had done for him. He looked to Billy, Robco’s words in his ears. Push had most definitely come to shove and he didn’t know what the terrified man beside him would do.

“I’m going down there.” John couldn’t believe his own voice. Billy looked at him, then back to the horror below.

“Stupid fucking idiot. Take this.” He gave John the long metal bar, John looked back confused. “Lever that rubble off him, head east, then south, don’t come back this way, I’ll meet you back on the road.” He looked John in the eye, forcing himself to speak slowly despite his own fear. “Do not let them see you.”

“I won’t, I can do this.”

“Shit goes sideways, I’ll open up on ‘em.” Billy positioned the thirty round, fully automatic, seven point six two millimetre assault rifle to cover him. That, plus the fact the unearned knowledge was among the more trivial responses from the jet black pipboy, gave John strength. “Go, now, while they’re …eating.”

John stuck to the shadows, moving quickly, quietly, rose carved pistol gripped tight. He tried not to think about her. Or that her life, the lives of so many others, depended on him. And he was most definitely risking it to help a stranger. John knew he couldn’t live with the choice to abandon another human to such an inhuman fate.

He crouched just close enough to the low walls and crept to the far corner. Near enough to attract the attention of the pinned man. He peeked over the crumbled ruins and saw that whoever these people were they’d put up a fight.

One of the green grotesques had a deep wound to the face. Green skin cut open revealing red and black matter underneath. It’s one reaming eye closed while it tore into a charred leg. Another had the handle of combat knife sticking out of its bulbous shoulder. Mutated flesh already healing around it.

John found a speck of rubble on the ground and tossed it lightly in front of the pinned man. He looked up and relief washed over his injured face, he wasn’t saved, but he wasn’t alone.

John stood to mantle the low wall, as he did the pinned man saw his vault-suit. More than that he recognised it, and recognised the pipboy too. The pinned man silently waved John away. Directing him instead to a torn, blood stained, backpack. Dumped unceremoniously a few feet away, urging him to retrieve that.

John’s first thought was it contained medical supplies. The man had been injured badly, so he crept towards it. Trying to hold back his fear. Trying to keep his adrenaline from surging and triggering the nightmare, dreamlike state he could feel underneath his skin.

Just when he thought the horror before him couldn’t get worse, it did. One of the inhuman creatures tore an arm from the impaled woman, angering the one eyed brute. Then it spoke. “I EAT FIRST.” It snatched the still very much raw, slender, female arm from the other creature in a display of dominance. John realised for inhuman, green, grotesque, monsters they had some awfully human traits.

John silently handed the pack to the pinned man who instantly took something from it and handed it back to him. About the size of a water bottle, rubberised antennae on top.

“It’s a beacon, battery’s fried, you got a four pin on that thing right?” John nodded, he’d have time for questions later. He took the crushed battery out and connected his four pin. The lights went from one lit to all five and the pinned man sighed, deeply, quietly. As if his obvious pain eased, if only for a moment.

“Come on, I can get you out of here just hold o—” The unearned knowledge stopped John dead as it whispered what else the pinned man found in the pack. A pair of fragmentation grenades. Through gritted teeth and a look of unadulterated rage the pinned man said one final word.

“Run.” John crept back, scared of more than just the mutants, gripping the beacon tight. He cleared the wall just as he heard the sound of something heavy, small and metallic, bouncing off concrete.

The nightmare, dreamlike state escaped, slowing time and taking over John’s vision. Green code scrolled down his periphery, filled with red error messages.

The one eyed brute grabbed one of its own kind and threw its ten foot body to the ground, dampening the blast. John heard the unmistakable sound of automatic fire from the adjacent building. Bullets zipped through the air striking another creature in the shoulder, then kicking up to its snarling face. It lasted long enough to stand and turn before its head caved inward, and it dropped down dead.

John saw the one eyed brute kick the pinned man, his undoubtedly brutal fate slightly blocked from view. Then the two remaining mutants turned their focus to him. Even in slowed time they moved fast for such hulking creatures.

The code came to a stop, as it had done before, response calculated. Only instead of green outlines and percentages, a single word flashed up inside his eyes. *Error*. A red warning indicator bloomed into view, turning his gaze from the oncoming monstrosities, telling him to run. He did.

John bolted, hard and fast, pounding his heavy boots against the blacktop. Pumping adrenaline into his tired muscles, his drained body running on sheer terror as the mutants closed in. Moving faster than something that size should be able to. John knew he couldn’t outrun them for long, he had to act.

He ducked into an alley, nearly tripping over debris. He managed to buy just enough time to clip the beacon to his belt, take a few deep breaths and check the pipboy screen. Finding only an unhelpful list of errors. He looked for east but had gotten turned around, unable to find it quickly without a map screen. The mutant with the blade stuck in its shoulder hurtled into the junction, its overgrown back to John.

With one last deep breath John aimed at the green, muscled back and fired twice, then twice again. His iron grip and well-crafted compensator allowing him to land four shots close together. The grotesque, green skinned, creature turned. More irate then injured, its face somehow angrier. It started to laugh in a voice that sounded shrill and somehow low at the same time. If John had anything left in his bowels he would of shit himself.

He fired the last two rounds in the mag, striking the not entirely inhuman creature in the chest. Drawing more rage than blood. He darted back through the alley, hoping the advancing atrocity would struggle over the uneven ground, it did. As John turned the corner he saw a blur of enraged green muscle tumble into the brick work. Cracking the wall, and bringing pieces down on to its bullet ridden back. His quick thinking counted for little when the one eyed brute loomed into view ahead, blocking the alley.

The slowed time came over John from nowhere. Not nearly as slow as before, but slow enough for the implanted muscle memory to seize control. Making him reload, then promptly unload, the full magazine at the snarling, green skinned, monstrosity.

The first few shots caught the creature in the chest, inflicting damage. But with alarmingly fast reflexes it blocked the remaining rounds with its thick arm. John had built up too much momentum to stop now. He timed his paces perfectly. Bringing his boot down on the bare foot of the creature that hadn’t escaped the frag grenades entirely. Then he slammed into it with all his mass, knocking the creature off balance and to the ground.

The slowed time started to speed up, fast. So with one last, fluid, untaught motion, John holstered the pistol. He drew the flat, cord wrapped, throwing knife. Hurling it down into the floundering brute’s one remaining yellow eye. The blade lodged in the socket as it writhed, screamed, and lashed out blindly at the air.

John thought with both creatures down, both with a full magazine of lead in them, one of them blinded, he had a chance. He was wrong. John made it a block and half before he had to stop. Stomach heaving nothing but bile. Lungs desperate to hold air in, muscles burning. An old familiar pain clawing at the inside of his head.

He could hear them now, the blinded brute screaming commands to the other, “FIND HUMAN. KILL HUMAN. EAT HUMAN.” They were getting closer. He had to hide.

He used the last of his strength to all but stagger into the only building that looked accessible. A near totally collapsed brick building with only the ground floor still intact. He stumbled through the empty door frame. His heavy boots, and heavier legs, sending glass bottles skittering along the floor. Hoping the creatures didn’t hear, he looked for a place to hide.

The ceiling had partially collapsed but inside he saw a bar, so he stumbled behind that. Trying not to kick any more bottles, and hoping the creatures would ignore just another grimy windowed ruin. They didn’t.

The clear outline of a green, grotesque, mutant appeared outside the glass. It didn’t so much smash through it as merely stepped through it, the thick green hide untroubled by sharp edges. It spoke. “HUMAN?” These mutants clearly had intellect, but little reasoning. John thought it almost sounded like the creature expected him to simply show himself because it asked.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, they weren’t invincible, and they were wounded. Plus he was armed. Slowly he drew the combat knife, then the bladed hammerhead. Turning the sharp edge outward, and cinching the lanyards tight around his wrists.

He tried to record one last voice message for Rosie, but only got bombarded with error messages he didn’t have time for. He said it out loud anyway.

“I’m sorry Rosie. I love you.” With a one last, slow, deep intake of air John jumped from his hiding spot. Coming face to face with the snarling, grimacing mutant. It screamed, he screamed back, and mantled the bar ready to cut this thing’s head off or die trying. A bright light filled the room, coming in at an angle, from above. But strangely, from outside and coupled with a whirring hum.

The creature turned instinctively to look, as the air ripped open with a deafening tearing sound. Sending forth a narrow stream made from hundreds of white hot projectiles that tore the creature to shreds. Splattering blood and viscera everywhere, smashing glass, splintering wood.

John flung himself back behind the bar and stayed there until the ripping and the light had gone. Unsure of what exactly just happened, he poked his head up. Enough to see the blind, enraged brute barrelling through the smashed window. Lashing out at the loudest sound it could find.

John readied himself again, scrambling to get up, to fight the already wounded brute. The ripping beam of lead had covered everything in fragments of wood and glass. He couldn’t find any traction, then it didn’t matter anymore.

Mere feet from him stood the ten foot, blinded brute, it’s simple, hole like ears hiding their efficiency. John tightened his grip and tried to stand up to the face of death. When from above something smashed through what remained of the ceiling, something heavy. A giant steel block from above crashed onto the blinded brute, crushing the life from it once and for all with a deep thud. Then the block moved.

The steel block stood to reveal a towering metal figure. Sturdy legs, broad arms, wide shoulder plates, and a head with intimidating, dark eyes. John didn’t know what it was. A robot, yet another horrifying creature, he tried to crawl away. But the steel figure advanced on him with an alarming, whirring stomp. The last thing he saw was a large mechanical foot kicking him in the face, knocking him out cold.