Chapter 2 “Don’t touch that.”

Rosie staggered and stumbled down from above the Vault. Following the vague path that remained visible even after all this time. Every unexpected rock or soft patch of earth made Rosie regret her quick thinking, not for the first time. Her improvised footwear meant stopping often. Perfect for climbing, not so great at walking along uneven ground. Something a lifetime of flat corridors left her ill prepared for.

Rosie managed to pull a snippet of music from the air before she started to descend. Not enough to recognise any of it, but more than enough to motivate her. Someone must be playing it, and others must be listening. Rosie tried to stay focused, knowing she was headed in the exact opposite direction to John. He wouldn’t have made that climb, he barely liked being that tall.

Every step she took put more distance between them, and thanks to his stubbornness, she had no food or water. Rosie kept a steady pace. Turning south with the path as she reached ground level, and finding it mercifully flat. As long as she weaved around the rubble in her path.

As she walked Rosie began to understand the new, old world around her. It must have been some sort of construction site that never got beyond the foundations. Stacks of long steel girders. Roads ending in nothing. Old machinery stripped bare, which really caught her eye because she knew that someone had to do that. There was life out here, at least at one point. Although the ever present, deafening silence gave no clue as to when that could have been.

Rosie stopped to adjust her footwear, again, and checked the map screen. Out in the open, the high frequency pulses were far less effective, returning blotchy data. Not like the crisp lines of the Vault. Still enough to show a clear path to the south that would have to cross the wide road at some point. Then she could head west, hopefully gaining on John.

She worried about him more than herself. Being slim and a foot shorter, she could hide, duck down, crawl under stuff. Plus she had a light step, none of which applied to John. That thought was enough to get her moving, and ignore her growing thirst.

The construction site faded from view as Rosie pressed on. Walking past haulage trucks, crashed and picked clean, leaving empty metal shells by the side of the road. Following a remnant of the road seemed the best idea. It must connect to the main road, although she thought it would of by now, especially as the blood red leaves began to reach overhead.

Being in the red forest provided welcome relief from the sun, creating a flickering effect as it punched through patchwork canopy. Trying to look up into the endless blue just made her dizzy. But she couldn’t help stare at the leaves, misshapen, irregular, yet alive. More than that, thriving in a world with fewer people, expanding, taking over more space. And if they were doing that it meant there must be water.

Thinking of the word amplified Rosie’s thirst. Going this long without water in the Vault wasn’t uncommon, longer during emergency rationing. This however felt different, not knowing where the water was made it all the worse. She checked the map screen. Hoping for some sort of indication may have been picked up by the automatic pulses. No such luck, just hazy and ill defined shapes due to the forest of blackened trees.

Again Rosie stopped to adjust her increasingly poor footwear. Finding the unfamiliar soil soft enough to walk on in just the hard wearing socks. Made from the same material as the advanced vault-suit she wore, that they all wore. It brought a welcome new sensation for the woman who only ever walked on steel and rock every day of her twenty five years.

Those days were gone now she told herself, even if John found the parts she wouldn’t be taking them back. They put her on shit detail for months at a time for trying to help them, who knows what they’d do for killing the Overseer. A pang of guilt brought doubt with it.

Rosie always regretted losing her temper eventually. Mostly when she had to tell John about it. He rarely, if ever, lashed out like she did, and he regretted it instantly. Maybe he wouldn’t care this time she told herself, they both hated the Overseer, he’d just be happy to see her. At least they could be together now.

The forest began to thin, forcing Rosie to tie the rubber soles around her feet again. The laces chaffing at her heel and between her toes almost instantly. Years of boots always a size too big meant it wasn’t an uncommon feeling, another thing she wouldn’t miss. Rosie began to see a cluster of ruins ahead. Derelict concrete shapes collapsed and abandoned long ago, built around a narrow road that must connect to the main one. It gave her hope that she might catch up to John, at least she’d be heading in the same direction.

The endless blue went from covered in shifting white blobs, to greys and black. She knew what it meant, she remembered night from the children’s stories, that was when the monsters came. Her rational adult mind told her that even if killer robots were real they would likely be scrap by now. Like the cars she’d seen, and she felt sure they were never actually fuelled by human blood.

Rosie tried to distract herself with the radio, nothing but static. Then by imagining what the buildings around her might have been. Anything not to think about water, or food. Or the twinge of rising anger she felt towards John for his hard-headedness, harder than the damn rocks he broke, for putting them in this position. Both of them alone, separated, further apart than they’d ever been. Even the kids in stories stayed in pairs.

The buildings continued to surround her as darkness fell over everything. Rosie still tried to distract herself by inspecting the ruins she passed. Pretending that she wasn’t desperate to see a trace of water amongst the collapsed concrete structures. One looked to be filled with cars. Another tall and square, with windows in repeated patterns like the Vault she’d escaped from. Nothing to indicate there would be anything to drink inside, even if she wanted to stop and look.

A loose chunk of blacktop caught the rubber sole of her improvised footwear. Forcing her to stop and readjust the increasingly uncomfortable remnants of her boots. Rosie cursed her bright idea as she tightened up the laces. Yet again she thought something up that was an ideal solution, implemented it, and then had to live with the consequences. Patience and restraint were never her strong suits. She sat in the middle of the street a while longer, trying not to let her frustration get the better of her. When something outside a collapsed entrance caught her eye. Red, lying on its side, white writing just about visible.

Rosie walked over to it and saw instantly what it was. A refrigeration unit, broken, tipped over, but worth checking for something to drink. Rosie wedged the flat end on of the crowbar into the seam of the door. Scraping, scratching, metal screeching against metal as Rosie worked the drop forged steel tool further in. Levering it back and forth, until the door popped open. Hitting the ground with a loud clatter, sending a single glass bottle rolling out.

Rosie dropped the crowbar immediately as she scrambled after the rolling bottle of dark liquid. Desperate to drink whatever it was. She grabbed it, stood and turned. Dropping the precious drink in shock as she saw three people surrounding her.

“Gimmie what you got!” A sickly looking man demanded of her, brandishing a rough hewn blade. Flanked by an equally sickly looking man and woman. All wearing crudely made scrap metal chest armour. Rosie froze in confused panic, people were alive, yet that didn't seem like a good thing right now. “You hear me bitch, gimmie what you got!”

“I don’t have anything, not even water.” Rosie slipped the retractable knife from her cuff, the only thing she did have, and gripped it tight. She recognised something in the people around her. Twitching, pupils pinned, they were addicts. High and unpredictable, just like her mother. Be calm, be passive, but be ready she told herself, remembering the lessons of her childhood. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll help you get it.”

“Chems, booze, caps, hand ‘em over!” He wasn’t listening to her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything, why don’t I go and find some for you.” That always worked on her mother, especially when Rosie returned with a can a solvent.

“That thing on your arm, give it to us, it’s gotta be worth a few caps." The sickly woman snarled through rotten teeth. Rosie was surprised it took them this long to notice her beloved pipboy.

“I’ve worn it for years it doesn’t come off.” Rosie lied, although she’d never considered taking it off, it was far too useful to be without.

“Oh I’ll get it off.” The man waved the barely sharp piece of scrap repurposed as weapon in her face. “Hold her down.” Rosie didn’t wait for them to advance any further. She lashed out with the retractable knife, slashing the face of the blade wielding man. He hardly reacted, his senses dulled by whatever coursed through his veins. She bolted, but her improvised footwear gave out instantly, leaving her face down on the blacktop at the worst possible moment.

“Dose her! She’s making too much noise.” The female attacker ordered as her male cohorts held Rosie down by her arms. She bucked, kicked, and screamed, desperate to get away. She felt a sharp pinch in her thigh, causing her vision to blur, her limbs to grow heavy. Then she felt a level of pain she didn’t think existed.

Just below her elbow the man with the slashed face forced the dull blade through her soft, pale skin, splitting the flesh. Rosie nearly passed out from the excruciating agony. Then almost blunt scrap hit bone, and stopped, sending an increased aftershock of pain though her entire body.

In that moment Rosie thought she was about to die, out here alone, like the foolish children in the stories. Then the pain vanished. Rosie felt a sense of calm unlike anything she’d experienced before. No pain, no fear, even her heartbeat seemed to slow. Something impossible appeared inside her tightly shut eyes, blinking in pipboy green,

*TRAUMA DETECTED EMERGENCY COMBAT PROTOCOLS ENGAGED*

Rosie opened her eyes. The world became brighter, sharper, light amplified, details magnified. And something else, something not possible, yet happening before her eyes. The slashed face dripped blood at a slow rate. The sadistic faces twisted into snarls moving impossibly slowly. Their bodies highlighted in a green outline, and code even she couldn’t read scrolling down the edge of her vision.

Electricity swelled up through her spine. Overtaking every nerve in her body, supercharging them, priming them for action. The green code disappeared just as fast it appeared and showed a single word.

*EXECUTE*.

The pipboy housing sent jolt of power through the sickly arm holding it down, knocking the man back. His slashed face seemingly not yet aware of the damage done to him. Rosie became almost a passenger in her own body, finding strength she didn’t have a moment earlier. Pulling her right arm free and kicking the woman holding her feet square in the face. Green dotted lines drew her focus to the dull blade wedged in her left arm. She tore it free with her right, and drove it up into the exposed throat of the crouched second man, following the lines in her vision.

In an almost nightmare, dreamlike state Rosie got to her feet and time snapped back. She heard the man behind her slump forward, driving the dull blade right through his neck as he hit the ground. At her barely covered feet, a body lay motionless, smoking burns up his track marked arm. Rosie locked eyes with the woman, cupping her broken nose, her pinned eyes wide with terror. Rosie didn’t feel anything, no pain, no fear, nothing. She just walked away, not noticing the spent injector stuck in her thigh till it was too late, and passing out cold.

Rosie woke by the side of the eight lane road she’d be trying to get to. Pain in her arm, her legs, and the back of her head. She gingerly felt the back of her head. Brittle red hair matted with dried blood, chunks torn out, as she turned she saw why.

The woman that attacked her had dragged her drugged, unconscious, body to meet another group of people on the road. Rosie tried to get her bearings as she pretended to still be slumped semi-conscious by the edge of the forest at the side of the road.

As the woman yelled and argued with the others Rosie took a moment to check her map screen. Finding the pipboy rebooted, filled with new notifications that she resisted the urge to dive into.

She looked around, trying to make sense of where she was. Hoping to see a way to run, but something whispering from the back of her mind told her not to. An odd thought told her about the long metal shapes these new, masked, people held. A mix of twelve gauge pump actions, and seven six two millimetre automatic rifles. The words made sense to her, but she couldn’t explain how she knew these things. It didn’t seem to matter, if they were friends with the woman, they were not friends of hers.

From the opposite direction she heard people along the road. Pained, anguished noises, mixed with shuffling steps and the clanking of chains. Rosie looked at five people in front of her, two young men, three women of a similar age to her. All beaten, chains around their waists connected to a heavy log. And a tight fitting collar around their neck, leather, buckled, and a mounted a steel box with a red light on it. The chained people couldn’t meet her gaze, staring at their feet, broken, resigned to their fate. A look she’d seen for years on the people she’d left behind. Even in her drained, numb, state it made her anger stir.

“Put that around your neck.” One of the masked people threw one of the collars at her feet. She couldn’t make out his face, wrapped in red cloth, eyes fully black and a rasping tone to his voice.

“Listen, I don’t know what happened to your friends, whatever she told you it was an accident.” Rosie tried to explain, to try and get some kind of grip on the dire situation. The only response was the racking of a shotgun. Hoping to just buy time Rosie put the collar on.

Another masked person came over, throwing metal chains at her feet and crouching by her side. The same cold, dark, inhuman eyes and face hidden behind red cloth. Rosie watched as the person opened packs of powdery bandages and started to wrap her arm. She’d seen them before, the treatment for a broken bone. She felt relieved, until she saw that it wasn’t her wound they were wrapping, it was the pipboy, soon to be encased is hardening bandages.

Rosie needed to do something. She wouldn’t be parted from the device she felt grateful to have, and it seemed more vital than ever out here in the new, old world. Rosie yelped as if pained by the rough treatment of her wounded arm. Not a difficult act to pull off given the bone deep cut. She curled into a ball, quickly sending the emergency signal by holding down both buttons and the sidewheel for a few seconds.

“Can you do something about this?” The masked woman with the bandages spoke with the same rasping tone, not acknowledging Rosie. The man pressed a button on the small device on his belt, and the collar around Rosie’s neck started beeping.

She didn’t understand what it was. Judging by the whimpering coming from the others wearing a collar at the mere sight of the device in the gloved hand, it wasn’t good. Her focus drawn by the nature of the ominous signal Rosie didn’t notice the cloth masked man getting uncomfortably to her face. Not until she could do nothing about it. He pulled the red cloth away to reveal what passed for his face, freezing Rosie in fear.

Deep, full black eyes set in sunken sockets. A nose replaced with a hole, and yellowed teeth plain to see through rotting, translucent skin. She relented, letting the masked people think they had the upper hand. Rosie knew that’s when people make mistakes, like letting her see the radio transmitter that controlled the collars.

The boot laces holding the cut down rubber soles on Rosie feet snapped a few miles back. She could see the blood seeping from inside her vault issued socks. The laceration above her elbow opened up almost as soon as she set the emergency signal going. Being nowhere near a network meant the pipboy triggered a notification every five seconds. Moving just enough to keep the hardening bandages from sticking to it completely. The fresh blood proving an expanding weak spot.

Despite these wounds, to say nothing of the tight collar padlocked around her throat, Rosie felt numb, without pain, without thirst. Even the heavy, awkward shaped log her new peers were chained to and forced to carry didn’t bother her. Everything seemed quieter somehow, removed, distant.

Her focus shifted to the people in red cloth masks. Full black eyes, what little skin they showed, burnt, rotting, and inhumanly indifferent toward the people they put collars on. The more information Rosie tried to gleam by watching the four of them, the more her anger built. Pushing against the numbness, bringing the suppressed pain to the surface. She had to stay calm, not something Rosie had a lot of experience in.

Rosie kept her mind quiet. Knowing that the masked people were overconfident. Arrogant in their attitude towards the people they presumably bought like they did her. Although she did wonder if they paid more than a handful of metal discs and injectors for the others.

“Don’t touch that!” The young woman chained next to her harshly whispered as Rosie pulled at the collar around her neck. “It’s explosive.”

Talking was clearly against whatever new set of rules that now governed Rosie, yet the dark haired woman beside her broke them. “I’m Rosie, where are we going?”

“Andrea. They’re taking us to The Grand, west of here.”

“Why?” Rosie had an idea, she just needed it confirmed, and she wanted Andrea to keep talking to her.

“Sell us as slaves.” Her voice broke as she said the word Rosie didn’t know.

“What’s a slave?” Andrea looked confused by the question.

“We are. We have to do what they say or they blow the collar.” Rosie was done taking orders, at least she was heading west.

The further Rosie walked down the eight lane blacktop the more her anger built. The more her rage pushed against the numbness she felt, driving it out and letting the pain creep in. Each time she saw the cruel indifference from her black eyed captors her small hands balled into white knuckled fists.

When one of her four other captives would stumble or lose their grip on the log they were forced to carry, it fell, dragging them all down to their knees. If it didn’t hurt to talk, thanks to the somehow tightening collar locked around her neck, she would have yelled at them. She wasn’t wearing shoes and she could walk. Most of all her anger built towards John. He could be held like this too, if he’d of only listened they could have gone together and avoided all this.

She tried to distract herself. Looking around at the blood red trees, the endless blue, the people, and whatever her captors were. All living on the supposedly uninhabitable surface, but that just brought her back to the lie she lived under. And that brought more white knuckled anger. Especially as it appeared she’d simply traded one Overseer for another.

Anytime their red masked captors would stop everyone froze. Rosie watched intently as they seemed to bicker. Each checking something on their wrists, then one pulled away his cloth mask to yell at another. She tried to listen but couldn’t focus on anything but his face, or what used to be a face. No wonder they wore masks, she thought, finding satisfaction in the pain they must be in.

Argument resolved, the lead captor actually spoke to Rosie and her collared captives directly. “You’re moving too slowly, we’re going to walk till it’s dark and you can rest your pathetic smoothskin bodies.” Rosie thought she saw a smile on what passed as his face, arrogant, mocking, cruel. Maybe the new, old world wasn’t all that different and that thought brought a real smile to her actual face. She knew how to exploit that kind of weakness.

Rosie’s captors led them a short distance from the road. Stopping by a ruined house, partially smothered by collapsed earth from the forest above. The relief from not standing on near bare and bloodied feet, mixed with the fallen night, left Rosie so drained she didn’t even notice why they’d stopped. Not until she heard the sound of water. Then the pain in her feet and the bone deep cut on her arm seemed trivial to the dryness in her mouth.

In what seemed like an act of profound generosity to the inhuman slavers, they allowed one of the younger men to be let of his chain. He filled a bucket with water from on old pump at the side of the house. Only after arming the collars of course, each one beeping in unison. Unless the lead slaver decided to amuse himself by letting one start charging, just to see the already broken people squirm. Another mistake, Rosie thought to herself, one she could use. And with the encroaching dark, combined with a feat of endurance, one she could begin exploit.

Rosie looked down at the bone deep cut on her arm, seeing it made it real, sending spikes of pain through her entire body. She tried to block it out, but the near constant movement of notifications on the pipboy under the cast had prevented any attempt at healing. The flesh swelled outwards from the crude laceration, oozing blood. Another bright idea, she thought to herself, although it worked better than she hoped.

The young slave returned with a bucket of what passed for water. Stale, dirty, and portioned out one pitiful ladle full at a time for the amusement of sadists. That made her angry enough to not drink it. Or so she thought before a soothing drop touched her cracked lips, reflexively taking a massive gulp, which only made stopping all the harder.

Rosie summoned every ounce of will she could find and held the water in her dehydrated mouth. Letting the desperately wanted water drip through her cracked lips. Mixing with the blood soaked, loose plaster cast around the pipboy. By the time the luxury of a second ladleful of water came around, she even managed to drink a little.

A decade of repairing poorly designed junk meant Rosie’s slender hands were well used to clawing and pulling at things. Something that helped as she tore at the weakened cast, starting with the blood soaked edge and following the line of drops down.

Every sharp tug or unexpected rip sent shooting pains from her lacerated arm. Her captors took little notice, sat talking amongst themselves, relying on their crude tech and not their dead eyes. Andrea however took notice.

“Hey, you go out of range the collar blows, you know that right?” Rosie didn’t, she also didn’t care. Radio signals were child’s play to manipulate, literally in her case.

“I’m going to jam it.” Even those few words felt like a struggle to get out.

“Will it jam mine too?” Andrea lent in all but mouthed the words, Rosie nodded. She didn’t see why it wouldn’t, but she answered before really thinking it through. “Help me with this.”

Rosie helped Andrea pull the chains taught. Using them to unscrew the threaded eye bolts from the heavy log they were bound to. Going painstakingly slowly, barely a sixth of a turn at a time, to avoid detection and the warnings of their fellow captives.

Rosie didn’t care, she wanted to get away from all of this, she wasn’t going to waste her best chance. Andrea’s bolt came free first. Rosie feared she may just run, but she helped with the last few turns. Then kept watch as they wrapped the chains around themselves to keep them quiet.

“Listen, we should go in different directions, then head south. Follow the river, it’ll take you to Bakersfield, you can’t miss it, ask for the Marshall, he’ll send help, and I’ll do the same. Got it?” Rosie nodded, although she no intention of going south.

The pipboy freed along with herself Rosie ignored the new notifications, for now at least. Scrolling straight to the high frequency mapping pulse options, setting them to near constant for the next hour. That would block anything getting through, especially the junk tightly strapped around her neck.

Tension built as Rosie readied herself as best she could. Mainly by breathing deeply and shutting out pain. Watching Andrea’s half raised hand as she picked the perfect moment, then it came.

Rosie pressed send on the freed pipboy and bolted without looking back. Driving the pain from her mind as she reached the cover of the house. An intense spike of agony shot through her foot just as she began to scramble up the slope to the dark forest above, but it vanished as quick as it appeared.

Rosie told herself that she’d go south, find help for the others, but in her heart she knew where she was going. Home, back to the Vault. She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t help these people from things she didn’t understand. She hated the feeling, but hated the thought of going further in this world alone more. She couldn’t even cry from the dehydration.

Rosie reached the precipice and hauled herself up and over into the dark forest. Unable to take even a moment to breath upon hearing the rasping voices shouting and screaming threats. Barely running on empty, Rosie got to her bloodied feet, taking a few steps into the trees.

A shadow from her side morphed into a man and scooped her from the ground. A broad arm squeezing what little breath she had from her slender waist while a stinking hand covered her mouth.

Rosie thrashed as best she could, sinking her teeth into the glove, the only thing she could think to do, and to little avail.

“Easy Vault Girl, easy.” Rosie bit down harder upon hearing the recognition in a deep voice she didn’t know. She stopped as a figure, clad in black, stepped from her own shadow, holding something round at Rosie’s eye.

“Stop.” The cold woman’s words, and something whispering from the back of Rosie’s mind put a halt to any further resistance. The woman lowered what Rosie knew to be a suppressed ten millimetre, somehow, and looked her right in her terrified eyes. “Are you jamming the collar?” Rosie nodded. “Good, is this doing it?” She took her left hand and raised the pipboy, Rosie nodded. “Are they all jammed? The hand released from Rosie mouth ever so slightly, yet she felt too scared to do anything but nod. “Alright listen, you’re going stay behind me and if you so much as twitch, I’m putting a bullet in your knee.” The thick arm lowered Rosie to the ground and collapsed in a heap. Drained, breathless, trying to stop herself falling face first into the dirt.

The woman issued hand signals as a third armed figure came from the shadows. Only to disappear back into them, submachine gun raised. “Move.” The pale blue eyes, human eyes, stared down at Rosie from the black mask. She half staggered from tree to tree till they were close to the edge, overlooking the people she’d abandoned. “Stop there, don’t move.” Rosie couldn’t if she wanted too. The woman took a scoped, bolt action rifle from her back and laid down. Positioning herself far enough away from Rosie to draw on her.

The blast of a shotgun snapped Rosie from her stupor as the red masked slaver threatened the three remaining captives. One with the shotgun, the other kicking while franticly pressing the jammed remote. The only other one she could see had caught sight of her tracks. Following them right into the path of the black clad man, his presence hidden in the shadow of the ruined house.

A deliberate noise drew the slaver’s attention. Right before a burst of cracking gunfire illuminated him in flashes as it tore through the rotten chest. He stayed standing for longer than seemed possible, until the woman next to Rosie fired. Hitting the red mask, splattering the rotten wood with rotten brains

Instantly another cracking burst of gunfire echoed from inside the house. Drawing the pair away from the collared slaves long enough for two more precise sniper shots. Followed by bursts of fire from the advancing shadows as they fell.

“Hey, you want that thing off your neck?” Rosie didn’t move, within seconds the woman picked the padlocked collar and threw it aside. Letting Rosie inhale her first free breath all day. “Small sips, or I’ll take it off you.” The woman held a water canteen out, sloshing it back and forth to draw Rosie to it.

Her hands trembled as she took it. Fearing it being taken away, forcing herself to sip the clean, crisp water slowly. “You’re in bad shape, we need to get somewhere you can rest, somewhere safe.” Rosie didn’t have a choice, she’d have done anything not to have the fresh water taken from her.

As the three black clad figures stood above her, Rosie tried to pay attention, at least these were real people. “Get them back to Bakersfield. Get stims, saline, gauze, and as many antibiotics as you can. We’ll get her back to camp. I don’t want to take her much further, if she goes into shock…” The smaller of the two men left, effortlessly bounding down the slope. Ready to move the freed slaves along.

“Easy Vault Girl.” The broad man crouched to help as the woman bandaged her feet and arms. Her mask pulled up, and a worried look on her face.

“Rosie.” She didn’t want to be called Vault girl

“My name’s Charlie, the big guy there is Paul, he’s going to carry you ok. It’s not far. I need you to stop jamming the collars so we can radio our friend.” Rosie offered no resistance, doing as asked. And with that the large man picked her up and started to walk. The only thing Rosie could before passing out was to try and picture the broad shoulders as John’s, not armed strangers in the dark forest.

“Maelstrom, Whirlwind. How copy?”

“Solid copy Whirlwind, the client wants an update.”

“Package is free and clear, confirmed headed south. Shit, Ghouls and slavers, we should charge him double. There's something else, secured secondary package…code Victor Delta.”

“Solid copy, sit tight. Maelstrom inbound."