Nuke Day, 2077

"Outcasts and Felons"

      The name hung proudly over the shoddy run-down shack that called itself a bar. Its floor was nothing more than a worn bed of dirt, vigorously cleaned by its kind hearted owner. The splinter burdened walls had been painted a rustic brown and sanded to perfection, and antique lights hung over the establishment's old benches, stools, and tables.

       Down the cramped alleyway of the Boulevard's shops and strip clubs a powerful set of footsteps shook the ground. Two suits of armor, worn and scratched from the unforgiving Wasteland, approached the establishment. Their occupants stopped at a polite distance from the two guards standing at the doors.

       A refurbished Assaultron appeared from the inside of the bar with its arms raised in caution. "Gonna have to leave the suits if you want in," one of the guards said.

     "Take good care of them, please," one of the suit's owners said, then moved to place their armor next to the bar. Both of the occupants stepped out and stretched in the brisk night air. The two were Ghouls, Rodriguez and Ramirez.

       "I should have realized it was you guys," one of the guards said with a smile.

       "Announce yourself next time, damn it," the other said irritably.

      Rodriguez shrugged apologetically. "I'll remember to," he said.

      The other rolled his eyes. "You'd think you would recognize us by now," Ramirez said.

       "Stop jumping Caravans and maybe we will!" one of the guards exclaimed defensively.

      The two suit owners wandered into the bar and took a place at the stools. While they waited for the owner to finish up serving others, the two quietly examined their surroundings. The "Outcasts and Felons" was a bar for those who weren't welcome anywhere else. Ghouls, outlaws, and other types usually harrassed or otherwise beaten elsewhere. The unspoken word was that no one messed with each other, and you didn't fight in the bar. The Assaultron was usually the one to reinforce that rule.

      The bar's owner finally finished serving their customer and met the two Ghouls. Kessy was a smooth-skin, very polite, and didn't have a discriminating bone in her body. She wasn't naive, though, and could handle a Laser Pistol better than most.

      "Which Caravan you ride with this time?" Kessy asked.

     "The Rocky Riders, coming from the Mojave," Rodriguez answered.

      "That's why your suits look so rough. You'll have to share some stories later," Kessy said.

      The two ordered their drinks, and had just finished telling a story when a woman sat next to Rodriguez. She didn't seem the flirtatious type, but had a hard edge to her. The Ghoul figured she had been a Raider at some point in time. He then glanced at the warning written in bright letters on the wall facing the door, "NO RAIDERS".

      "Can I help you?" Rodriguez asked, always the cautious one.

      The woman sat in silence for a minute, seemingly psyching herself up to ask a question she was afraid to. She kept looking down and biting her lip. Then she said, "So...you're a Ghoul, right?"

       Rodriguez lifted a brow. He thought it was obvious since he hadn't had his face covered, as he usually did when outside of his suit. This bar was a safehaven for his type, though The obscurity wasn't necessary.

       "Yeah," Rodriguez answered.

      "Can I ask you a question?" the woman asked hesitantly.

      Rodriguez braced himself for the influx of stupidity people always threw when they asked that question. Most asked if he had eaten anybody, others gave crap about his skin. It was infuriating and degrading to listen to.

      "Can you tell me about when the world ended?" she asked.

      Rodriguez was taken aback by what she had asked. In his lifetime, the Ghoul had been asked a lot of questions.

      Rodriguez sat back on the stool, and a rush of memories came flooding back to the surface. He was suddenly awash in feelings and emotions. Voices of those long dead. The horror of Nuke Day was as fresh as the mud on the floor.

      In the Fall of 2077, Rodriguez had been stationed in Great Falls, Montana alongside his childhood friend, Ramirez Ayapo. They had been in Great Falls for six months and could feel the tensions rising. The war was escalating, and rumors of some serious crap was on the wind.

      Rodriguez and Ramirez's Company had been called to assist in the final preparations for Vault 28. Their Company CO had assured it would be an uninteresting task, but no one believed him when they started packing the big guns.

      Rodriguez and Ramirez were instructed to bring their T-60 suits, and fitted with a Gatling Laser and Minigun. That's how they knew something was up. Power armor and heavy weapons were not needed to unload supplies.

      The Army set up in the early morning and got the trucks set up. Ramirez and Rodriquez were sent to guard the gate with two other soldiers and told not to let anybody in. The soldiers in the Power Armor were set up just outside the gate. No one asked questions, and were told nothing.

      Business was moving swiftly when civilians began to arrive at the gates. The crowd was told the same repeated message, "Nobody is allowed in."

       Somebody finally shouted, in growing panic, "Have you not heard what the fuck is about to happen? You can't be this heartless!"

      Rodriguez was confused, but stuck to his orders. Someone tried to rush the gate, shoving violently past the crowd. The soldier stood squarely in the center and spun up his Gatling Laser. The lasers cut into the man's legs, sending him face-down into the pavement. "Get back!" Rodriguez snapped, keeping the gun spun up but not firing.

      It was then he heard the sirens. They drifted up the hill in an ominous tone, bringing an eerie silence as everybody stopped to listen. Then the transmission broke the silence, a robotic drone that sent a chill down Rodriquez's spine.   "Nuclear strike imminent. Those outside should seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill."

      Rodriguez turned to Ramirez who looked confused. "What the hell?" the soldier wondered.

     The message repeated, and the crowd panicked. Rodriguez was no longer concerned in keeping the civilians out. He turned and pushed the gate open, letting it swing wide. "Come on!" the soldier shouted to those who hadn't run. He stormed up the hill, falling behind the civilians to keep them moving.

The Vault's entrance had been dug deep into the mountainside, and Rodriguez knew that was their only hope for survival.

      He sprinted up the hill as fast as his suit would go, but remained behind the slowest, pushing them ahead to keep pace.

      As they reached the Vault entrance tunnel, Rodriguez heard it. The faint whistling of a falling projectile. He looked through the trees to see the nuke seconds before it impacted. His vision was blinded by a flash of violence, and a mushroom cloud billowed from the detonation. "Oh shit," Rodriguez muttered.

      He didn't wait, but rushed to the tunnel. He knew that, without some kind of barrier, the heat and pressure would boil the civilians and soldiers inside the tunnel.

     "Ramirez!" Rodriguez shouted. He grabbed a Semi's trailer with his armor and wrenched it off of the kingpin. With a mighty shove, he pushed it towards the tunnel. Ramirez caught on and helped move it into position. The trailer successfully blocked the tunnel, but both soldiers were trapped on the other side.

      The two traded a knowing look, then Rodriguez took off towards the guard tower. It wasn't the best cover, but it was better than being out in the open. Both soldiers piled inside just as the shockwave blasted over the earth. The sound was like nothing either had ever heard. A deep, hauntingly damning sound that shook your insides and rattled your skull.

     The cataclysm of destruction followed shortly after. The sky was snuffed out and replaced with a maelstrom of fire. Rodriguez's Geiger counter spiked and his radiation readout climbed.

      Rodriguez remembered crouching down in the tower, eyes clamped shut, and praying that it would be over soon.

      There was a moment the soldier lost consciousness, and awakened to the sound of a raging fire, but there was no telling how long he had been out. Rodriguez felt like shit and his vital readouts were saturated with radiation with his Geiger counter maxed out and clicking aggressively.

      Rodriquez pulled himself off of the ground to see a hellscape stretching out before him. The trees were stripped of their leaves, and the grass had been scorched to the charred black dirt.

   The soldier turned his headlamp on and illuminated the darkness to find Ramirez on the ground next to him. Rodriguez rolled him over, fearing the worst. There was no way he had survived as well, but the heap of armor began to move. The other soldier lifted himself off of the floor and let out a long pained groan.

     "Oh god," Ramirez rasped. His voice was much rougher than Rodriguez remembered. He was alive. They had both survived a nuclear detonation. Somehow.

    "We need to get to the tunnel before the rads take us," Rodriguez said urgently, pausing to hear his own voice that was also rougher than he knew it was.

      The soldier left the safety of the watch tower and started to pull the trailer out of the way. Ramirez stopped him before he could unblock the entrance. "Rodriguez! Stop!" He snapped. "If you move that, you'll be killing the others."

    The other soldier paused and took a step back. "Shit. You're right," Rodriguez said.

      "Look, I don't know how, but we're still alive. And the rads aren't killing us. We need to get out of here and find out how far this went," Ramirez said. He was speaking firmly, trying to bring Rodriguez down from the panic that was seeping into his blood.

    "We can't just leave them. That vault's sealed. Its not going to open. They'll die in there," Rodriguez said, pointing to the tunnel.

    "We'll come back for them. We need to find out what happened," Ramirez said.

    "We just got nuked!" Rodriguez shouted. "That's what the fuck just happened."

     "Maybe it was just the one, a localized attack. There's only one way to find out, Rodriguez. Come on," Ramirez said and turned around.

     The two soldiers left the Vault's entrance and back towards the gate. Down the pathway were the corpses of those who didn't make it. Their charred bodies were strewn along the path, frozen in their last dying moments. Rodriguez tried not to look.

    Both soldiers found their weapons where they had left them, still operable despite being drenched in radiation.

    Without a working vehicle, both soldiers walked back the way they had came and descended into a dark and silent city. They tried to avoid as much destruction as possible, but it was everywhere. Rodriguez had hoped that the nuke would have taken the city with it, but its point of impact hadn't been close enough. Instead the shockwave of fire and radiation had taken everything else.

     The streets were filled with derelict vehicles with occupants who had been fried in their seats. Rodriguez had never seen so many corpses in his life, and hoped he never would again. Ignoring them was impossible. Everyone was dead, everything was gone. The darkness was suffocating, and the incessant ticking of the Geiger counter was the only sound besides their footsteps and the roaring of the radiation storm.

      It took hours to find the military base, and Rodriguez felt nothing but fear and horror walking amongst the corpses of fellow soldiers who didn't make it.

    Knowing the only survivors would be in the lead-lined safe room, the two soldiers found it at the deepest part of the base's basement.

     Rodriguez's heart sank once they saw the open doors of the safe room, and a body in the doorway. They hadn't made it in time.

    "There should be a communication terminal in here," Ramirez said. He did a brief search and found the terminal, then leaned down to access it.

    "Why aren't we dead?" Rodriguez wondered out loud. He had nothing close to an answer. Just questions. So many questions.

    Ramirez was silent as he accessed the terminal. Silent for too long.

    "Any response?" Rodriguez asked.

    The soldier stepped back from the terminal and shook his head. He didn't answer, just pointed at the screen.

    Rodriquez leaned down and read the text, then slammed his fist down in rage, breaking the terminal into a mess of circuits and sparks.

    This was not an isolated event. It was everywhere. American had fallen, and the Communists had won.

     Ramirez removed his helmet and Rodriguez stared at him in shock. "Why did this happen?" Ramirez asked.

     Rodriguez removed his own helmet and stared at his reflection in his visor. A horribly disfigured face stared back. Burned skin, and a gaping hole where his nose used to be.

    "Why did this happen?" Ramirez asked again, facing Rodriquez. The soldier's expression was that of pain and fear. Rodriguez wasn't sure if he meant his skin, or the war. Both were valid questions. Neither which there were an answer for.

     "This has got to be a miscommunication. Crossed wires somewhere. This can't be it," Rodriguez said in disbelief. He went back to the terminal to try to find something else. He didn't find anything more than the single damning message, sent out on a general broadcast from Washington DC. It was genuine, and oh so damning.

     The soldier rested with his hands on the counter, head bowed and unsure what to do next. This was the end of the world. Where do you go from here?

    "The people back at the vault entrance will need supplies to last out the lethal radiation. We're the only ones that can help them," Ramirez said.

    Rodriguez shoved all the rage, confusion, and fear deep into a box and closed it tight. There was a goal now, people to help. Something to do. "Right. One thing at a time," the soldier said.

      The two soldiers, knowing that rule and protocol was a thing of the past, raided the military base for what they could carry. They found a handful of radiation suits, rations, and both Radaway and Rad-X. With these items stashed into a bag, they trekked back through the ruined city and to Vault 28.

   From there both soldiers hesitantly left their armor and found themselves hot, but unharmed. The scarring wasn't just on their faces, but their entire body. It was unnerving to look at.

    Rodriguez and Ramirez squeezed through a hole in the trailer, dragging the equipment behind them, and were met by the soldiers that had made it. They were cautious at first, then horrified once they understood who they were. Everyone had questions, no one had answers.

     Only a few civilians had made it, four in total. And four soldiers also remained. Eight people, scared, angry, and confused. There was a wide array of emotions when Rodriguez and Ramirez confirmed it wasn't an isolated event, and the world had in fact ended. One man became so distraught about his family that he rushed the barricade and squeezed through. His dying screams were difficult to listen to, but confirmed that the unafflicted couldn't yet leave.

     After treating everyone with radiation medication, Rodriguez and Ramirez slipped outside and entered their suits. Both soldiers trekked to the top of the hill to gaze over the destroyed city. Visibility hadn't cleared by much, only enough to see the tallest buildings poking out of the destruction.

     "This is it," Ramirez said. "The end of the world."

      "We're in this together. Promise me, that no matter what, neither of us will ever leave," Rodriguez said. "We've got to stick together now. No matter what."

    Ramirez gazed out over the destruction and felt nothing more than dread for the future. "No matter what," Ramirez repeated.