"Hey Honey, I'm home!" I exclaimed, dropping my bag on the floor as I walked through the door.
"James!" Natalie shouted, and before I knew it my vision was completely covered by a mess of red hair, her momentum almost carrying me back out through the door, "I missed you so much!" She muttered into my shoulder, then, before I could even choke out a reply, my lips were touching hers.
It reminded me of the first time I had met her... Had it already been fifteen years ago? Maybe even more than that, right now I couldn't care less.
Right now, there were only the two of us.
The kiss was over too soon for my liking, yet it allowed me to finally look into her sky-blue eyes again, the same ones that I had been daydreaming about throughout my time away from home.
"Me... too." I sighed, breathing in her scent, "It's finally over. I'm home for good."
She smiled sadly, tears rolling down her cheeks, "But at what cost?" She interlocked her fingers with mine and lifted my arm to her cheek, wiping her wet face with my hand.
"Don't worry, it looks like the real thing," I wiggled my fingers as I brushed her cheek, and I knew that, though I couldn't hear it, she could. The whirring of tiny, barely audible servo motors.
She sighed, "But it isn’t your real hand, is it?"
I couldn’t argue with that, nor could I reply, for another familiar voice interrupted me.
"Ah, sir! You're home, and without any other substantial injury!" Codsworth emerged from the corridor connecting the other rooms to the main body of the house.
"Codsworth! I trust everything's been running smoothly while I was away, bud?"
"Wonderfully, sir! Though I must say, Mum’s been doing fine and dandy even without my help,”
“Oh please, Codsworth, I don’t know what I would do without you.”
I remembered when I had first seen the robot, returning from the Alaskan front for some time off, if you could call it that. I had arrived home to find the flying metal octopus working in the kitchen, an incredibly distressing sight, being fresh off of the battlefield and everything.
"On that note, mum, young Shaun has finally gone to sleep-" As if on cue, crying emerged from one of the other rooms of the house, "Or maybe not..." The robot butler muttered, turning around to tend to the noise.
There it was... Shaun. The other one whom I had to leave behind, and who had been on my mind ever since I got the news of my wife’s pregnancy after my injury.
"Don't worry about it Codsworth, let me tend to him. It's..." I wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve, "I think he needs some fatherly love. He's been lacking that for a while now,"
After what Natalie and I called The Incident, I had let myself believe I was home for good. Yet not even a month later, I was holding a letter from the Military, delivered to me by a fresh-faced private. I highly doubted the high-ranking officer that had signed this had contributed much else to the writing of this letter.
Amidst a bunch of fake sincerity was the offer of a promotion to the rank of Major, along with a semi-safe position as garrison commander of a Supply Depot in Alaska that I’d later come to know as Foxtrot-Twelve.
Despite the nicely worded letter, I knew this wasn’t a choice, but rather a kindly-worded order. Declining would mean me losing my job and all the benefits that came with it, including the monetary aid that came with my war injuries.
Or it could be worse. Marked as a traitor and thrown into a POW camp, where the real enemy would tear me to shreds.
Such was life nowadays, where everything weird or even slightly cowardly was associated with the red menace, and where the country that was supposed to be protecting its people had no qualms with gunning down hungry folks protesting in the streets.
Shaking my head to clear my thoughts from the politics of today, I walked into Shaun's room. There, in his blue crib, was my crying baby boy.
My son. My Shaun.
I tickled his stomach, staring at him for a while before looking up to see my reflection in a nearby mirror. A goofy smile had spread across my face, one that the boys back in the Hellcats would've made fun of as long as I lived. The bundle of joy stopped crying after a while, and a smile spread over his face, much like my own. Nat and Codsworth entered the room behind me.
"Hey there, Big Guy..." I muttered, picking him up, "Jesus, you're heavy. What've you been feeding him with?" I smiled, looking at my wife.
"Just the usual." She winked, poking her breast with a finger.
More giggles followed as I looked back at him, and he grabbed one of the fingers of my prosthetic arm.
"See Codsworth? He only needed me."
"Jolly good, sir! Magic hands, that's what you have! Off to do the laundry!" And he floated away.
Nat smiled once more.
"Hon, frankly, I'm surprised you arrived so soon, we were expecting you much later today. Shaun already had his dinner, how about we have ours?"
"One of the other parts of the day I've been looking forward to today!” I smirked, “I wonder what you've made."
"Store was jam-packed with people, so I gave up trying to buy anything worthwhile, and instead grabbed a few boxes of noodles. Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least I can call it my own with all the extra things I added to it... Á la Natalie, if you want to be fancy."
"I'm not going to complain, anything is better than the MREs they serve in the army… And your noodles..." I gave a chef’s kiss.
Following my beautiful wife to the dining table, watching her hips sway from side to side as she strode through the corridor, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was dreaming. If I was still at the supply depot.
She pulled out the chair for me to sit on, her gaze telling me that this was my day, and any arguments would go straight over her head. She'd be serving me today, even if she was just as tired as I was. Not half a minute later, a steaming bowl of noodles was sitting in front of me, the smell heavenly and nostalgic. Natalie pulled up a chair beside me and set down her own bowl.
For minutes, the noise of us eating and Codsworth's distant sounds of movement were the only things that punctuated the silence, me looking up every few seconds to find Natalie's eyes. It felt so dreamlike, staring into them, yet this was definitely real.
"What was it like there? You hardly wrote to us." She asked, and I thought for a while about how best to answer.
"I wasn't allowed to write most of the time. Couldn't even write that down, so strict was this whole letter-writing ordeal." I waved my fork around while explaining, "Those commie fucks have ears and eyes everywhere, and who knows how many stealth squads they still have roaming about in Alaska" I slurped up half a forkful of noodles.
"Yes, yes, Pete’s secretary said something similar. Constantly getting reassured that you're safe where you are though? After a while, I just couldn’t believe it. How is anything to do with fighting in a war safe?"
"Well, as far as army jobs go, this was by far safer than most. It was mostly paperwork for me. Logistics and sh-" I cut myself off, reminding myself to keep the swearing to a minimum now. I wasn't among fellow soldiers anymore, "-stuff, something I was quite underpaid to do, might I add, but that's just my own opinion... Truth is, I had the rank and the people under my command to hand off quite a bit of my work to them, and I wasn't that big of a dick to make them hate me for it. You could say every cloud has a silver lining... Until you get close enough to said cloud and realise it's just crappy iron, not silver."
She snorted, before poking her food a bit more, "Is there anything you can tell me now? Now that I don’t have to worry about your safety any longer, I want to know if I had anything to worry about."
"Not too much happened that could be called interesting. The dogfights, while at the time were quite stressful, they managed to get the blood pumping in such a way that paperwork just couldn't."
"Dogfights?"
"Squadrons of red fighters escorting bombers would appear on the horizon, and not a moment later the sirens would go off. Tens of minutes of chaos as the numerous AA emplacements we had went to work tearing apart the undersides of the planes. Whatever remained was quickly intercepted by the nearby air wing posted at one of our airbases. Experimental planes, supersonic fighters, at least two dozen of them. The sound they made-" I whistled, "That alone made every second worth it, and the sight of them blowing apart the Chinese air force..." I could feel the blood pumping in my ear now, the pictures returning to me as clear as the days it had happened. I placed one hand onto the other one, subconsciously tapping rapidly against the table.
Natalie's face wore quite the opposite emotion to what I felt, "You don't miss it though, do you?" Her voice was hopeful, and I knew she was afraid I'd be going back.
"Not one bit, and you can be damn sure of that. The company I oversaw was redeployed on the Chinese front, and the depot was dismantled. No need for it now, seeing how the reds were pushed out of Alaska back in January. The lads rejoined the Sixth A.I.R. on the frontline."
"Now what's that? A.I.R.?"
"Armoured Infantry Regiment. Power armour and other mechanized vehicles...” I felt tears well up in my eyes, “All of those sent to the front were young men and women, some of them not even that... Kids, that's what they are, fighting for a better tomorrow. They weren't the same as my boys back in the Hellcats, or even the lads in Fox company when I was in Alaska for the first time, but they still felt like family when the time came to leave. Getting the letter from Lieutenant General Hudson that I was free to go, along with the orders to pack up camp and get moving... Well, let's just say it didn't take long for the company to find out about my departure. They put their money together for a farewell gift." I muttered, smiling sadly while poking the keychain in my pocket with a fork.
Slowly pulling out the aforementioned keychain, a twenty-four-karat golden figure of a bear hung from it.
“Holy crap…” She gently brushed its surface, “This is an amazing gift!”
“Amazing gift for an amazing leader.” I smirked sadly, “It’s all a thing of the past now. I hope I get to see all of them once this damned war is over… But the reality of it all is that not everyone will have the luck of returning home alive.”
It was so hard keeping the memories of the front from surfacing, and it was even harder to push them out of my head once they resurfaced. The last thing I needed was for her to see me as a sobbing wretch.
However much she wanted and tried to do so, she could never understand how strong those bonds were that had formed there. I could trust each and every one of them with my life, and they could trust me with theirs. Such things weren't forgotten easily, nor abandoned.
"Hun... I didn't want to upset you." She placed her hands onto mine, me reflexively clutching them.
That helped.
"No, it's nothing... It'll pass. Before I forget-"
"Yes?"
"Next week, there'll be an event in the Veteran's Hall. I'll be given a nice shiny medal for my service, and in return, I’ll be saying a small speech."
"If it means an end to your participation in this useless war, I'm okay with it. I want my husband to remain at least fifty per cent human by the time we're grandparents."
I smiled, my thoughts travelling down a completely different road now, one that had always been nagging at me. What to do after my time in the army ended?
"After this, I might get a normal job, how about that? Open a shop or something."
"You? Customer service?" She laughed, poking my synthetic arm with her fork, "You don't have the patience for that."
"I'll have the patience for it if I enjoy doing it. It doesn't sound that hard, and I'd be happy to cook things tastier than what they served me in the army..." I chuckled, "I'd be doing a service to mankind, and that alone would keep me going."
She continued smiling, and I found myself doing the same.
"All that time... Lost," She muttered, "We’ll never get that back."
"We just have to make up for that lost time by using what remains to the fullest extent possible."
She smiled sadly, before holding one of my hands with both of hers. I stuffed the remaining noodles into my mouth, before asking for a second helping. She laughed and gladly handed me a second plate of her tasty cooking.
Soon, I was standing up from my seat, patting my belly contentedly.
"Was it enough?" She questioned
"Completely," I muttered, "I'll be sleeping like a rock today, that's for sure."
"I hope you don't plan on going to sleep like this."
"What's wrong with this? It's how I've slept for quite some time now."
"Maybe in the barracks, it helps you folk sleep better, but I, for one, don't want to sleep next to someone who smells like used gym clothes that have been left in a sealed bag for a month," She sniffed the air, "Which has also been kept out on the sun," I threw a kitchen towel at her playfully, which she caught without issue, "I'll clean up the dishes."
Showering, now that was something I had done little of thanks to the fact that very little of the military budget had been spent on the comfort factor of the depot. Providing us with warm water was no different. While the infrastructure for it was present, after the first hundred soldiers took a shower, it gave up on life and stopped producing anything for the rest of the day.
And that was without factoring in the never-ending sabotage and bombing of the various off-site water treatment plants, which left us completely without water for a few days after every such event, while the supply line was fixed or rerouted. The extra paperwork for me didn't exactly help either.
I had very nearly ordered a constant perimeter to be set up around the nearest one on multiple occasions, something which might’ve gotten me in trouble for wasting the Army’s resources, even if the troops would’ve gladly followed my command.
After I thoroughly washed myself down, enjoying the hot water that ran over my body, the liquid initially turning from clear to dark by the time it reached my feet, I walked outside with nothing more than a towel tied around my waist. Looking into Shaun's room one last time, I took the sight of my baby boy in once more.
It felt so surreal. Laying there was my son...
Kissing him gently on the forehead, I strode into our bedroom, my wife already sitting on the side of the bed. Throwing the towel onto the backrest of the chair, I laid next to her, and she was more than happy to finally get under the covers.
"That's something I missed." She muttered.
"What is?"
"The bed won't be so cold anymore." She smirked as I pulled her closer, enjoying her proximity once again.
"I'm happy that there's no spring stinking into my ribs or back," I replied, and she chuckled light-heartedly, "And of course that I finally have someone to share my bed with.”
"It's good that you're home." She whispered, turning around, and planting a soft kiss on my lips.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"Yeah. It is." I smiled, the lights blinking off as she flicked the switch beside the bed. As if smacked in the head with a brick, I was asleep.
----------------------------------------
In what seemed like a second, I was opening my eyes again, only I wasn't in bed anymore... Well not in my bed back at Sanctuary Hills anyway. Rather, I was looking at the ceiling of the officer dormitory building at the United States Forward Operations Camp in the Philippines, on the Island of Luzon. A familiar sight, unfortunately.
"James, we're moving in twenty minutes! Get your lazy ass up already!" Someone kicked my bunk, and I sprang to my feet, "You're not missing out on this lovely day. Forecast calls for a slight chance of rain and an increased chance of Commie artillery shells, now wake up or Adams will have your balls for breakfast!"
"Where we going?" I asked drowsily knowing that voice well enough. It belonged to Captain Frank Geris, leader of the Third Armoured Assault Company, and one of my best friends ever since I joined the Academy.
"To the front, where the fuck else? Drink some coffee, that'll get your brain running."
"This must be a nightmare," I muttered, looking at my watch while rubbing my face. I still had my beard, something that I had grown in the last two months of my posting... In Alaska. I hadn't cared about my appearance much the past few months, but back whenever I was? They'd have my guts for fucking socks if they saw me like this.
Nevertheless, it still felt real. Too real.
As it always did.
Dressing up in my power suit underlay, my hands moved automatically. Whatever my brain had against me, it sure as hell wasn't letting me take control of the situation, because I’d be running as far as possible right about now.
"You mentioned Adams? The old bastard's been assigned to us?" This very same conversation had happened once before, one year before my return home. One year ago, this exact set of events had played out for the first time ever.
"Lucky us, right? Couldn't believe my shitty luck when I saw him disembark from the last batch of cargo shuttles." He groaned, tightening his belt, "Must've run over a dwarf without noticing it... Or whatever those fuckers are called."
"Leprechauns?"
"Them's the ones. Green little assholes. I never did like the look of them anyway, so I say it deserved it."
I grinned, "And here I was, hoping the old man had enough common sense to stay in Hawaii, leaving the work to the newer generations."
"Age does many things to a person, but all of those things seem to steer clear of the bastard like he carries the plague." He looked at the clock on the wall, "Now hurry up, or you won't live long enough to enjoy your trip to the beaches."
"See you later."
"Hope so. Beers are on me tomorrow, yeah?"
I walked outside and surveyed the camp that I always hoped I'd never see again, yet here I was.
Chief Engineer Butch Adams stood near the power armour storage racks, hundreds upon hundreds of them. They weren't the same ones I had used in Alaska, newer models. Even though he didn't look the part, the elderly engineer was amongst the top five highest-ranking soldiers in the entire camp.
"Just about time you got here, you sorry sunuvabitch." He grumbled, spitting dip into the dirt, and adjusting his cap. I was surprised at how calm he was, especially because this sure as hell wasn't how he had acted during the real thing. Out of everything, it was this part of my memories that my brain was sugarcoating? Really?
"Sorry Sir, won't happen again!"
"Guddamn right it won't, now get over 'ere. You boys are getting a real treat this time." He smacked the set of armour beside him, "Newest version of power armour we 'ave, fresh out of the factory! T-51B. Light, yet durable, and the servos are better than the T-45... Sand shouldn't cause any issues."
"Sounds like a good choice." I smiled.
"Those commie fucks won't know what's coming at 'em. Two thousand of our hellcats will assault that beach today, all of 'em flying out from this very camp," He beamed, and I couldn't help but smile at the term he had used. That name had started out from us, the Second Armoured Assault Company, the original Hellcats. By now, it had become a generalized term for power armour-wearing infantry, across the entire nation, "Not to mention the rest of the field army... A hundred thousand soldiers, equipped with ballistic, gauss and laser weaponry. Tanks, APCs, Fighters and Bombers... The top brass ain't holding back anything for this operation. Talk around the base is that the marines are also launching an assault of their own further up north."
Adams' jitters were manifesting in the form of talking, a stark difference compared to me, who stood silently, listening to the Chief Engineer talk, trying to relax as best as I could.
This wasn't going to be like Anchorage, we weren't fighting on home turf this time. Power armour had still been extremely experimental back then, but due to its successes on that front, it was now more widely supported by the Army, and with more funds shoved into the project, they were constantly getting better and better. Adams was right, the Reds wouldn't know what they were going to be facing.
Stepping into the power armour, it closed around my body, foot clamps tightening around my soles and similar mechanisms fastening around my hands, like gloves. The T-45 had only a joystick, but this?
It was way more comfortable.
"Calibrate it now, lad... You know how to do it."
First, I lifted my right hand, then my left. Adams nodded and adjusted some of the joints, once again spitting on the ground. I did the same with my legs, then with my head, the engineer making similar adjustments every time.
"Wow, this is much better than what we had in Alaska." I couldn't keep the amazement out of my voice.
"It still has some small kinks that need ‘ammering out, but nothing that'll be too much of a problem for you. I suggest you get out of it now and strap some grenades onto your chest."
"What use is it under the armour?"
"Just do as I say, boy! Fucking eggheads back home got the message that keeping grenades on the belt of the actual armour was a bad idea, seeing how your primary job is to charge head-on into a fuckton of bullets... Point is, they gave you a little compartment near the waist that you can shove a grenade into while still inside your armour."
"They finally listened? That's a surprise!"
He slapped the metal shoulder of my armour to signal that I should get a move on, which I did by quickly opening the armour back up. Strapping a dozen grenades onto my harness, along with a pistol and a few magazines, and just in case, a combat knife.
Then I was back inside the suit, testing the grenade port a few times to get used to it, before setting off.
Grabbing a gatling laser from its charging rack, I boarded the UTAC assigned to me and my company waiting on the runway. That too, was a prototype, one that made me feel uneasy strapping myself into. It was an Unmanned Transport Aircraft, controlled from this base. It sounded like a surefire way of getting shot down, seeing how the pilots weren't actually in the heat of the moment, but complaining would only cause more problems whilst solving nothing.
They also doubled as kamikaze planes, since after we passed over the drop point, and it was hopefully empty, they would fly into enemy positions behind their lines. The perfect incentive as to why we should jump off in time.
This was the turning point of this war, and as the Chief Engineer had said, no expense was being spared. Though there had been many attempts before, with varying degrees of success, this was the biggest operation to date. We were storming the beaches of the Chinese homeland now and the war would be over soon if everything went as planned. The entire mechanized infantry regiment would be the first to get dropped in, side by side with the rapid-descent battalion, consisting of paratroopers and light vehicles, and together we'd be creating the beachhead that the rest of the army would use to arrive via landing crafts.
The UTAC lifted into the air, and with the bay doors closed, the only source of illumination came from one red signal light. It'd turn yellow when we'd have to get ready for the drop, two minutes after which it'd turn green. Three seconds, that's how long we'd get to react to it changing before the floor would open underneath us, and we'd be dropped into weightlessness.
What had then been a three-hour ordeal during the real thing was now over faster than I would've liked, the red turning to yellow, and then to green.
Blinking once, I was falling.
The suit, like its previous version, had good shock absorbers, but from this height, falling with terminal velocity by the time we got to the ground, the force of stopping so fast would turn anyone and anything into human jelly. We were jumping from eight thousand meters, after all, a good enough height for the UTACs to be hard to spot with the naked eye. Thanks to the stealth measures incorporated into their design, there was no way we'd show up on the radar or get tracked by homing missiles and automated AA emplacements while in the plane.
That was going to change now that we had split ways with them.
The Reds knew we were coming, their espionage skills vastly outdoing our own, but we'd tried our very best to keep the exact when and how a secret. We'd be dropping in on them out of the blue, if everything went according to plan, catching their defenders by surprise.
Each power armour was equipped with an oxygen tank and a pressurizer, to combat hypoxia and decompression sickness and to stop us from dying once we landed, we had a parachute and a bunch of thrusters on our backs, both of which would activate automatically once the correct altitude had been reached.
The drop would be bumpy, but survivable. It had been this or arriving from the ocean, something equally possible with the power armour, but it'd be less of a surprise for the enemy. They already knew about that capability of ours since we'd used it multiple times in Alaska, where we had stridden over the bottom of small bodies of water to flank the commies.
When the altimeter reached three thousand meters, the first AA shots flew past us. I watched as one exploded in blank space, the tiny fragments of it continuing their journey and shredding six lightly armoured soldiers dropping with us. Another one macerated an entire suit of power armour. Not a moment later, a thruster flew past my face, with its wearer no longer attached.
I hoped the soldier that it belonged to was no longer among the living because knowingly speeding towards your death was a horrible way to go. We fell for what felt like ages, explosions going off all around me, until finally first my parachute, then my thrusters activated.
The latter did so with a roar, kicking up sand all around me just before I was landing. My stomach curled in on itself as I did so, but with three deep breaths, I kept whatever was still left of yesterday's MRE dinner down.
This was not the time to be sick, we were officially on the battlefield now. All around me, more and more of my brothers and sisters-in-arms were landing, and in front of us all, I could see the first Chinese defensive line, hundreds of troops scurrying about as they tried to get ready for the assault.
Aiming my gatling laser at the line, I pulled the trigger and the gun kicked backwards, the only laser weapon that did this with the others being completely recoilless. Hundreds of soldiers followed my lead, other lasers spinning up, miniguns buzzing to life.
The entire line was obliterated in mere seconds, the rapid-descent battalion's troops using us as cover while firing at those that had escaped our non-discriminatory fire.
"Continue to the next position!" I ordered, relaying the orders arriving from the officer's comm channel to the rest of my company. We were moving, impenetrable walls of armour and death.
With a single leap, we were on the far side of the commie trench, while the paratroopers occupied it.
The two or so hundred power-armoured soldiers that were still alive on our section after the landing, moved at terrifying speeds towards the next line, joining up with more of the first assault wave. Using the servos our suits had been fitted with, there was no issue with sprinting through the mud and sand of the battlefield.
Bullets pinged off my armoured plates, and once again I was bringing my weapon up, its barrel already spinning.
Then the shells arrived, whistling from afar.
Chinese ground-pounders fired from behind the enemy lines, the big fuck-off cannons flinging half-kiloton bombs at us, designed specifically to whistle as they sailed through the air.
"Get to the trench, on the double!" I yelled, pushing one of my soldiers forward and jogging after him while continuing to fire at the enemy line.
And then one struck the ground near me.
Hot shrapnel passed straight through my armour, dirt blinding me and the ringing in my ears deafening. The soldier who had been before me a moment ago was now in three pieces on the ground, yet as I was flying through the air, watching the ground getting closer, I could only think about my own pain.
Suddenly everything went black, my eyes fluttering open for a split second, looking up at orderlies and a tent's ceiling, the smell of disinfectant filling my nose.
"His arm can't be saved! Amputate it now, or we can kiss him goodbye. NOW!" Shouted one of them.
"Give me that scalpel!"
And just like that, I was blacking out once more.
----------------------------------------
"Check if he's awake." Someone hissed.
"Looks like he's not." Came another voice. This was certainly not a part of my dreams.
"Are you sure? Last thing we want is him getting up and shoving a tire iron up each one of our asses."
"You crazy? I'm not getting any closer to him, he looks like he's sleeping. Probably is."
"This is The Ghost we're talking about here, normal doesn't fit him." My name... My new name was uttered with an air of terror.
"Shut the fuck up already! He's asleep, and that's that!"
"You'll be the first one to die if it turns out he was just lightly sleeping or pretending, I'll make sure of it." That was a third voice, "Now, take everything you can find that looks even slightly valuable, especially his cap stash... The boss needs that. Drench everything in fuel while you're at it, we'll be leaving this place in a blaze of glory. It'll be the perfect lesson to anyone else who tries to fuck with us."
"Boss, wouldn't it be better if we just killed him now? Cap him in the head and call it a day?"
"We could, but that's too easy a death for him. Burning alive is much worse... Work quietly."
The floorboards creaked as they got further away. As far as I had heard, there were three people in my house, but there could be more. The closest one had stayed in my room, a meter, maybe two away from me, searching my drawers, as was apparent by the not-so-quiet inspection of my dresser.
I opened my eye just a crack. Nobody was guarding me... Just that type of carelessness that I expected from raiders.
My dreams had taken me back to days when everything had been better... More carefree, in a way. But that was the past, and now was not the time to sink into that pit of deep shit. The new world humanity lived in was much bleaker, and the new name of what had once been the United States of America reflected that.
The Wasteland.
I got up slowly, placing my feet in such a way that I'd not step on a creaky floorboard. Two steps and I was behind the man, grabbing his head with both hands, one sliding deftly over his mouth. All he could do was jump, his scream muffled enough to not be heard. With a twisting motion, I wrenched his head to the side, cartilage snapping under my hand, and his feeble struggling stopped. Taking my knife from its sheath at my ankle, I stabbed it into his windpipe for good measure, so that he'd not alert anyone with his last breath.
Murder was an everyday occurrence, one that didn't bring me enjoyment, but was a necessity if you wanted to survive.
"Did you hear that?" Whispered one of the voices, trying to be quiet, but failing massively.
"Probably just Finn fucking around." Answered the third voice.
"Well, if he doesn't stop fucking around, The Ghost will wake up."
The Ghost. A name I had adopted quite a while ago, one that mirrored what I was in this world. A relic of the past. A ghost.
I laid Finn onto the ground as silently as I could, then opened the bottommost drawer, the one the newly deceased raider hadn't opened yet, and drew my revolver from it.
Walking into the kitchen, my pride and joy, since not everyone could say they had a working refrigerator and oven, I looked around hoping to find who I guessed was the boss.
There he was, a thickset man with no hair and a bushy beard, staring into my fridge. I knew his face, had seen it plenty of times while talking with their leader, El Dorado.
A stupid name that had lost all previous meaning since the bombs had been dropped.
One of the floorboards creaked under my foot.
"What is-" He whipped his head out from behind the door, but his sentence was left unfinished as a bullet pierced his head, splattering the inside of my fridge with what little brains he had. He collapsed backwards, causing the ruined contents to come crashing down onto him.
"OH FUCK! GRATE! FINN!"
"Neither of them will be answering," I called out, standing beside the door that the last man's voice had come from. My living room.
"FUCK! I'll get you for this, you son of a bitch!"
Just as I had thought, the raider ran out of the room like an idiot, and I stabbed blindly at him with a wide swing, aiming for the area where his neck most probably was.
It was something I had learned to keep to a bare minimum in the wasteland, as depending on luck alone was a surefire way of getting yourself killed, yet I could never truly get this dependence out of my system. So far it had more or less worked the way I had wanted it to.
He screamed, which meant that I had missed my intended target, and as he fell backwards, the man dragged the knife from my grip. My reflexes weren't as good as I would've liked, my grip tightening too late to properly grab the blade.
Fuck me, did I hate to fight right after waking up.
Panic took over the raider, and he fired his pipe pistol into thin air until the clip emptied. Before he got the chance to reload, I stepped out of my cover and shot his hand, blood spattering the nearby chest of drawers as his gun clattered against the floor, landing on a bed of empty casings he had spent, and followed by yet more blood and two mangled fingers.
He screamed even louder, and I pointed my gun at his head.
"Oh god, don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me!" He whimpered, holding his stumpy hand with his other one, while slowly pushing himself backwards.
My knife was still lodged in his right shoulder, but that didn't seem to bother him as much anymore. As blood flowed down his arm, he left a trail of crimson, similar to how a snail left its own slimy trail. The acidic tang of urine filled the air, and I saw a puddle of liquid pool underneath the terrified man.
"You shouldn't have come here," I growled, cocking my revolver, staring the pathetic man in the eyes. Knowing the gang he had come from, he had done horrible things just to get into it. No matter how hard I tried, it was physically impossible for me to feel remorse for him.
"I-If you kill me, my gang will come after you, you know that!"
A final, useless warning. A final attempt to save his life.
"Let them come," I whispered, pulling the trigger.
----------------------------------------
"This is where I want my stuff Judy, if it isn't a problem," I told her, pointing at the location on my map.
"Of course, Ghost."
"Thank you." I smiled.
Judy was one of the few people I could call a friend in this wasteland. A ghoul, who was as old as I was. She understood my situation, hell she was in the same shoes as me. My skin might not have reflected what I was, but I was like her, and she knew that.
"I was surprised when you radioed me after such a long time... Why are you leaving?"
"I can't stay here anymore, the Black-Hand Gang’s too much, even for me. It'd be suicide to fight all of them, even for me."
"But why Boston? There wasn't a whole lot there the last time I went that way."
"When was that?"
"About a hundred years ago. I doubt much life has returned to that place since."
I shrugged, "It's not really about the people Judy, it's about going home. I've been feeling more and more homesick lately, almost every night I have the same fucking dreams. If the Black-Hand come for me, I'm going out on my own terms, and part of that is sitting down on the couch of the house that I had once lived in."
"If you say so. The only time I tried going home was the first time I had seen a deathclaw. I had narrowly missed a meeting with Death himself that time. I swore off nostalgia after that, especially once I reached my town, or rather what was left of it. Homesickness is something that reduces your chances of survival. That's what matters in today's world."
"What happened to it again? I'm sure you already told me that."
"Had an army depot near the town so the Chinese thought it was best to bombard it with nukes until only dust remained." She snorted, but there was no humour behind it, "I guess they failed there because half the church was still standing, even if nothing else was."
"Guess you can count yourself lucky that you managed to escape that fate,"
"Luck!" She laughed, "That's a good one! You, talking about luck?" She looked me in the eyes, "Now, I must get going. There are still quite a few stops I have to make before reaching Boston from Alabama, and quite a few of them are nowhere near the road to Boston, so if I know you well, and I very much do, then you'll be there before me."
I chuckled, "Stay safe, Judy."
"Me? It's you that's crossing half the wasteland on your own with nothing but a military backpack and its contents. I've got enough caravan guards to conquer the world with, I'm as safe as I can be, and I'll not be running into trouble without the proper numbers, unlike you."
"Well," I sighed, "We can all use some luck once in a while."
"What is it with you and luck?" She shook her head, "You've changed since the last time we met, Ghost. You never were one to talk about luck. It can only get you so far in today's world, you of all people should've learned that in New Vegas."
"I never did the playing there, though, did I?"
"Yeah, you never did... Maybe you're just good at crossing blind fucking luck with smarts, and it's just always worked in your favour." She shrugged.
"You could say that."
She sighed, "Good luck, Ghost. You're right about one thing, we could all use a bit of it sometimes." The businesswoman walked away, jumping on top of the lead caravan, and slowly fading from sight.
"Home..." I sighed, lighting a cigarette, and taking a massive draw from it. "Here I come."
I took a few more draws, before flicking it inside the building.
The raiders had had the not-so-bad idea to send the house up in flames while I was still inside. This way, it would be less suspicious that they were gone. Raiders running away with the loot wasn’t uncommon. The manhunt for them would take months, maybe even years, or until they forgot about it.
I had buried two of their bodies as covertly as possible, and the third one I had stripped and left inside to burn. Hopefully, that'd make them believe I was dead, and maybe that belief would stay that way forever.
The house I had lived in for the past ten years was hungrily devoured by the flames, the dry wood eagerly burning.
"Boy, oh boy, will I have some catching up to do," I muttered to myself.