Work Text:
The warehouse was crawling with creatures straight out of a horror movie. Shuffling, groaning, rotted looking things: ferals, the locals called them. The radiation warped husks of what had been people — once.
A long damn time ago, maybe.
Now they were empty vessels — the walking not-quite-dead, who, like their horror movie counterparts, possessed the same mindless hunger and drive to seek out the sweet, tender flesh of the living.
Like they were doing, currently.
What the hell. Really — what the hell?
The handful of surviving ferals moved with alarming speed, (another thing the silver screen got wrong, these things didn’t walk, they sprinted), clawing and tumbling their way through the bottleneck of shipping crates, towards the trap Mal had set for them.
And, more worryingly, towards him.
Swearing, he took the last corner at a dead run and stumbled around the slick, rainbow-tinted sheen coating the floor. He kept his balance, but lost precious momentum in the process. The two-story high tower of boxcars that represented safety loomed closer, closer. A dozen yards away; a half dozen; four —
The feral that’d been gaining on him, a spindly looking thing wearing the tattered remains of what might’ve been a dress, hissed and launched itself at his back. He heard it, twisted, tried to use its own momentum to roll it over his shoulder.
Too slow.
“Shit — ahh!” Mal felt claw-like fingers rake down the right side of his arm, tearing his shirt, another snatching at his hair as it slammed into his back. The impact threw him forward; its legs tangled with his and they both went down.
Mal hit the floor hard, his chin connecting with dirt and concrete — the taste of salt and iron flooded his mouth. The feral recovered first, bony fingers drawing blood as it raked at him again with surprising strength for something so frail looking. Something slick and warm tingled where it splattered against the bare skin on the back of Mal’s neck and the side of his face.
Drool. It was — drooling on him.
Shit, shit shitsthishit —
Behind, the stragglers let out a chorus of guttural cries as they started to close in on their quarry. The one pinning Mal gave a furious yank at his hair, twisting his neck and preparing to take the first taste of its hard won dinner.
Mal’s previous plan went out the window, as panic set in and adrenaline sang through his veins.
This was stupid. Really, really stupid, but if he had to choose between probable death, and the absolutely certain death of being eaten alive by a stock horror movie trope — Jesus Christ this world was a fucking nightmare, what the fuck, what the fuck — Mal knew which he’d take.
He ducked his head, leaving the feral with a handful of hair as he tore out of its grasp, then he shoved his left hand into his pocket, pulled out one of the last surviving mementos of his old life, and flicked the lighter to life.
Once chance —
Blindly, Mal tossed the lighter behind him in a desperate hail Mary, aiming it towards the corridor flooded with fuel, praying to whoever might be listening that he was far enough away to avoid getting caught in the flames.
The feral holding Mal lunged. Broken, jagged teeth sunk into the junction between his neck and shoulder. Behind, the warehouse floor erupted into a column of fire, the sudden rush of flames and agonized screams of the pack caught in the blast drowning out his own as the one pinning Mal tore away from him, taking a chunk of flesh with it.
Something hot and wet gushed down Mal’s shoulder, his arm, soaked through the rough fabric of his shirt. Heat rolled in nearly unbearable waves from the floor behind, a rush of superheated air thick with the nauseating stench of charred flesh and oily, black smoke.
Pain seared down his neck and shoulder. It was white hot, every bit as furious as the blaze burning down the corridor, but there wasn’t time. He needed to move; he needed to get out, before two hundred years of rotting wood and tinder turned into a grave for more than just the walking dead.
The trap at least had done its job. Even as the fire continued to burn, the screams of the dying ferals cut off, leaving only the roar of the flames. The last remaining feral had moved away from Mal, temporarily losing interest in its prospective dinner in favor of skittering off to the side, black eyes wide and wary as it regarded the blaze. Blood — his blood, Mal realized with dawning horror — glistened wetly around its mouth and spilled down the front of its withered chest. The byproduct of the piece of him it had —
Don’t think about that — do not think about that. Focus.
Gritting his teeth, Mal pushed himself up with his good arm and climbed shakily to his feet. The right side of his shirt was soaked through, and he felt more blood winding down his arm and dripping from his fingertips. Little drops of red shone bright in the firelight as they dribbled onto the floor.
The feral seemed to have lost all interest in him though. Either fear or whatever passed for curiosity in the rotted remains of its brain locked it in place. It chittered softly to itself as it swayed and watched the fire eat up the sides of the wood beams holding up the sides and roof of the warehouse.
Stiffly, Mal drew his pistol with his off hand. Pain and shock had left him dizzy, and in any other situation he would have doubted his ability to shoot accurately, but from this distance it would take a miracle to miss.
Head tilted to the side, as if listening for something out of audible range, the feral let out a gentle noise. It was such a soft, almost human gesture that for a second it gave Mal pause. But only for the span of a breath.
Overhead, a series of cracks and the squeal of warping metal pushed him to action. Time was up. Mal’s arm gave another sharp stab of pain. Dark spots flickered in starburst patterns across his vision. The heat put off by the fire was starting to push tolerable.
One shot did the trick — a facsimile of a corpse reduced to the real thing.
Mal drew in a shaky breath, lungs burning from the gathering smoke. Coughing, he quickly re-holstered his pistol and pressed the sleeve of his good arm across his nose and mouth and stumbled towards the nearest exit.
That, he thought, was not worth 200 caps.
Half a day after he’d set out from the small settlement to deal with their ‘small feral problem’, Mal staggered back to the farmhouse, considerably worse for the wear. The woman who’d enlisted his help in the first place watched his approach from the patch of sickly looking vegetables she and several other workers were tending, eyes wary.
It didn’t escape Mal’s notice that one of her hands hovered near the pistol at her side. Not a threat — not yet. It was something he’d come to realize was commonplace, these days. He approached slowly, keeping his hands in sight and his movements careful and deliberate.
Two weeks out of the Vault and Mal was already hyper aware of just how unprepared he was to survive out here. This was a world that counted wealth in bullets and bottle caps, and he was running dangerously low on both.
“You have any luck out there?” The woman jerked her head to the west, where the sun was already sinking low in the sky and a column of dark smoke continued to rise. “What’d ya do. Burn the whole damn place down?” She laughed, a wet, harsh sound and spat on the ground.
“Not sure I’d call it luck, exactly.” Mal grimaced. “But it’s done. Now ah — you mentioned payment?”
She nodded. “200 caps. That’s what we agreed on.”
“Right. I could also use some supplies, if you have any. And —” He hesitated. “A doctor — I need to find a doctor.”
The woman laughed again, long and loud. “Doctor? Ha — well good luck with that.” Some of the dark mirth faded, and something closer to complacency crept back into her expression. “Haven’t seen a doctor out here in months. They pass through sometimes, with the caravans. Usually heading to Diamond City or Bunker Hill. If ya really need one, that’d be your best bet. But —”
Her eyes lingered on the blood and hastily bandaged wound, mouth thinning, recognition and acceptance in her expression, which was answer enough on its own.
“Supplies, then,” Mal pressed. “Medicine, or stims. Don’t you have anything?”
“Not what you need, that’s for damn sure. ‘Sides, got my own family to look out for, assuming I had anything that valuable on hand in the first place — which I don’t, in case you’re gettin’ any ideas.” She sighed. “Look. You seem decent enough. Helped us out of a tight spot, and there’s not many who’d bother with that these days. But unless you want tatos or melons, there’s nothing else I can do for you — I’m sorry.”
A bleak shadow seemed to stretch between them.
“Fine.” Mal reached up with his left hand, rubbed at his eyes. At some point a headache had burrowed into the space between them, a dull, persistent ache.
They finally ended up bartering. A couple things of water, a handful of other essentials. She stopped Mal, though, as he started to leave.
“Wait,” she called. “Hold up, before you go.”
Mal stopped, frowning as he watched her step back into the house a moment before returning. Light from the setting sun glinted off a clouded-glass bottle of liquid she held in her hand. No label. She held it out for him to take, and he did. He uncorked it, took an experimental sniff before wrinkling his nose at the fumes.
“Alcohol?”
“Moonshine,” she corrected. “Not Bobrov’s or anything fancy like that, just some local homebrew, but it’ll do the trick.” She shrugged, offering a look that hovered somewhere between apologetic and resigned. “Best I have to offer.”
Sighing, Mal tucked it away in his bag. “Better than nothing, I guess. Thanks.”
“I’m not usually one to be givin’ advice to strangers but —” She worried her lower lip between her teeth and reached up to tuck a strand of coarse, silver hair behind her ear. Then she shook her head, let her gaze track southwest, to where a bank of dark clouds were starting to gather, blocking off the view of the sunset. “You better get going if you’ve got somewhere to go. Storm’s coming, and you don’t wanna get caught out in the open at night during one of those. And — good luck. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Yeah. That made two of them.