Chapter Text
To say Keira was in shock would be an understatement. She was numb to her very core. Her world had been turned upside down in less time than it had taken to put Shaun’s crib together. Walking out of that vault and meeting the inhospitable Commonwealth had really done a number on her. She had met her old Mr Handy robot by the broken remnants of her house, in the destroyed neighborhood she used to live in, but she found it hard to even talk to him. He wanted too many answers that she wasn’t prepared to give. He did direct her in a vaguely southwards direction where she eventually stumbled upon a friendly dog at the old Red Rocket station. She found she vastly preferred its company, the dog didn’t demand answers or make her talk about things she wasn’t ready to yet. The dog didn’t want to know about what she saw in the vault, what she awoke to. And after it helped her kill some crazy, ground burrowing creatures that looked like moles on steroids, the dog was became her only friend in this crazy reality.
She scavenged the coolant station for supplies and found an underground cave with more of those damned moles. Luckily for her she came across a stash of ammo, an old hunting rifle, some snacks and some bottles of water. It began to get dark, so she locked up the garage as tight as it would get, and curled up next to Dog in the corner of the garage to rest her eyes for the night. Sleep did not come easily and when it did it was brief and filled with nightmares about being eaten alive by mutant moles.
When she woke up, she found that Dog was still curled up close to her with his head tucked onto his paws. She ruffled his fur and thanked him for still being with her. He gave her a look that said he wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world. Keira wrapped her black hair into a tight bun to keep it out of her eyes and tucked her bangs behind her ear. Then she gathered up her supplies and fashioned a backpack out of one the old mechanic uniforms by tying the leg and arm openings shut. She slid the 10mm she found in the vault into her waistband and carried the hunting rifle in front of her. She’d be prepared if any more of those godforsaken mutated creatures came at her again.
She started walking in a southward direction. Codsworth had said something about Concord, which she remembered wasn’t too far from her old neighborhood, but she didn’t want to deal with people right now. People just meant more questions she wasn’t ready to deal with yet. And who knows what kind of people this crazy world had produced in the last 200 years? Dog trotted next her and picked up his snout and gave a short and quiet woof.
“What is it boy?” He woofed again and headed off a ways. She saw a ramshackle building in the distance. Warily, she approached, but not before she stumbled across what looked like a freshly dug grave with a crude cross stuck in the ground. Some flowers had been placed there recently. She didn’t see anyone around and just beyond the grave there was an entire field full of plump juicy melons. Surely they wouldn’t notice one or two missing? She snuck into the field and pulled up a melon when all of a sudden, she heard the click of a hammer being pulled back.
“Don’t move Scavver. Just drop the melon and get the hell off our land and we won’t hurt you.” Keira looked up into the barrel of a crudely fashioned pistol, and then to a young woman’s face, she looked to only be about 17-18 years old from her guess. Dog growled at her.
“I don’t want any trouble, I was just hungry, I’m sorry.” Keira dropped the melon and held up her hands. “Look, I’ll pay you for them.” The young woman trained the pistol on her as she dug into her pack for some cash. She threw some bills at the women in an attempt to appease her.
“You have got to be kidding me. Those ain’t worth anything. Got any caps?”
“Caps?”
“Yeah. Caps dumbass. You know, bottle caps?” She had found some old Nuka Colas at the coolant station last night. But they were unopened so she pulled out the bottles and offered them instead. The young woman quickly bent to pick them up. “These’ll do”. A man and woman appeared behind her, both armed.
“Lucy! Is everything alright?” The new arrivals both had their weapons pointed at her.
“Yeah, just caught this scavver trying to make off with some of our melons, but she seems like she’s willin’ to trade for them, so we’re making a deal.”
Keira stood up slowly with her arms out in front of her. “I don’t want any trouble, If you want the bottle caps off these Nuka Colas, then take them.”
“Where you from Scavver?” the man asked her.
“I’m from the Sanctuary neighborhood, just north of here. I...just...got here, I guess. I was in a vault…”
The woman looked her over and took her in. A sad sight to be sure. A lone woman in a blue, near perfect vault suit. “From a vault you say?” The Abernathys had scouted the area north of Sanctuary and found the old vault doors but hadn’t really thought much about it, since there hadn’t been any way inside. “Come on, come inside we’ll get you taken care of.” The farmers looked around warily for any others in case this was some kind of trap before they holstered their weapons and walked towards the large shack. The women walked next to her. “I’m Connie Abernathy, it looks like you’ve met my daughter Lucy, and that’s my husband Blake. This is our farm. It’s not much but we do just fine here.”
“Its nice to meet you.” Keira forced out. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of these people. One minute they had guns in her face, and the next minute they were making introductions. They were dirty and their clothes were threadbare. The house was ramshackle, but comfortable in a way. There was a goddamned two headed cow in a pen on their land. Connie set her up at the table with a plate of fresh vegetables and a glass of clean water.
“Thank you so much for this food, I don’t have any caps for you but I do have some other things you might want. Ammo, snacks...” Keira thought about her meager supply.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the right thing to do. You look like you could use some help. If you really want to make it up to us you can help out on the farm. If you can help us with the crops we’d be willing to pay you in caps as well.”
“Sounds fair.” Keira forced a small smile and ate her food in silence while the Abernathys looked at her curiously. After her meal she excused herself and went outside and began picking crops. She put in almost a full days work and returned to Connie with her results.
“You do good work, I’ll pay you 100 caps.” Keira quickly pocketed the currency. “You can stay here for the night if you’ve no where else to go.” She didn’t, so she took Connie up on her offer. If they wanted to kill her they would have done so already. She whistled for Dog and they headed inside.
Blake was sitting inside by the fire and he looked at her soberly. “You need to be real careful out here. People aren’t going to be as nice as we are. Plenty of bad people out here. People like those that killed our daughter. Raiders they call themselves. A bunch of murderers and thieves and rapists.” He spat. Keira didn’t know what to say so she just listened. “They came and took her and they murdered her, the savages. The filthy goddamned murdering savages took her and killed her.”
“Dad, you’re scaring her.” Lucy was cleaning her pistol at the table.
“No, she needs to know what she’s up against, what kind of world this is.” Keira’s hand reached down and made sure her 10mm was still at her side, for reassurance. Dog was curled up in the corner of the room looking at her calmly. “Listen, I know you’ve been in that vault this whole time, all safe and sound, so you don’t know the dangers, but I want you to be prepared. There’s people who will kill you without any provocation, you need to be real careful. I see you have a weapon and that’s a good start. Do you know how to use it?”
Keira thought about the rabid mutated moles and nodded briefly. She and Dog had managed to kill about 7 of those bastards so far.
Blake nodded. “Good, that's a good start. Listen, we’ll be here if you need anything, if you need a place to stay or if you need to earn some caps. Just look out for yourself out there.”
Keira excused herself and went upstairs to the dirty old mattress and laid down for a while while the Abernathy’s continued their light discussion below. It was a long time before she fell asleep. She woke up the next morning before anyone else and headed out before anyone had the chance to stop her. Her pack felt heavier and she looked inside and saw that Connie had put some tatoes and melon slices in her pack for her. She smiled. Her first human friends in this wasteland. Not too bad. She promised herself that she’d repay their kindness when she could.
She continued her journey Southward, unsure of what she was looking for. Dog walked along beside her occasionally huffing and woofing at things he smelled. Around midday Dog stopped short and growled. She immediately stopped and pulled out her 10mm pistol and scanned the area. Ever so faintly she could hear the moans of some godforsaken wasteland creature. Dog had his hackles up and was pointed in the direction of an abandoned shack. She pulled out the old hunting rifle and looked through the scope.
What she saw turned her stomach. Three barely human maniacs running around aimlessly, moaning and growling to themselves. Their faces were badly scarred and mutated and they didn’t appear to have any of their wits about them. What the fuck. Keira laid low and gave the abandoned shack a wide berth. Whatever they were, she did not want to deal with them right now. Unfortunately, Dog had other ideas. He took off like a shot and began to attack the maniacs. She didn’t want to lose her canine companion to those feral beasts, so she reluctantly ran after him.
She aimed her rifle at one of the moaning beasts and was pleasantly surprised when her first shot landed firmly in the center of its chest, knocking it over dead. The others heard the sound of her gun fire and began to head in her direction. Shit, shit, shit. She tried to reload but they were on her, quick as shit. Their flailing limbs and wild groans stirring fear into her very core. Fuck fuck fuck. Think! There was an old truck not too far away, so she ran to the truck and jumped up into the bed where the flailing limbs couldn't reach. She pulled out the pistol and shot wildly. One of her shots landed but it wasn’t enough. Dog jumped at one of the creatures and pulled it down, keeping the flailing monster grounded long enough for her to aim at it and land a shot in its head. The last one was running around wildly and it was hard for her to line up a shot. Dog tore at it’s ankle and tripped it up and she aimed and fired until the damned thing lay still.
Her heart was pounding and she did not notice how badly she was hurt until the adrenaline wore off. She had a couple of long scrapes down her neck that were burning. Judging from the filth of the creatures, the scrapes were going to fester. She didn’t have any medicine with her. But she could still walk so she counted herself lucky she was still alive. Dog trotted up to her with black blood around his snout. She was not happy.
“Listen to me, Dog. You do not run off like that again! You stay near me, until I tell you to run off OK?” He looked chagrined and upset at the chastisement, and then he wagged his tail and gave her a sorrowful look. “It’s OK boy, just don’t do that again, OK?” He woofed at her in agreement.
Once she made sure there were no more of those freaks around she headed over to the shack to scavenge any supplies. There was a musty old mattress and a first aid box with some stimpacks and some purified water. She stimmed herself and saved the other stim for later.
As she continued on, she kept her rifle out ahead of her at all times. It was slower going, but she couldn’t be too sure what craziness she’d find. Mutated humans, two headed cows, rabid moles, who knows what else? She stopped at Walden pond for lunch. There didn’t seem to be any immediate danger so she holed up in an old cabin and pulled out some melon slices, some potato crisps and a carton of purified water. According to the recording next to the building, this was Henry David Thoreau's old cabin. Huh. Interesting.
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way,” was carved into the wall. Wise words, Keira thought. She wasn’t planning on looking back anytime soon. Everything hurt too much to look back right now. Everything was just too unreal, too different. There was no point in dwelling on the past. On ruminating on events she couldn't change. She had to face what was in front of her. This waking nightmare. It was almost too much too handle. Don’t look back indeed. She needed to stay on top of her game here. There was no time for the past. No time for mourning. She only had time for survival. She locked the cabin doors and curled up with Dog and stroked his fur. She wasn't sure if her petting was calming him or calming her. Neither of them minded though. She fell into an uneasy sleep. When she woke it was still dark, but her pip boy said it was only a few hours until daybreak. After a light breakfast of raw tatoes, she headed out again, rifle at the ready.
Funny thing, stars. Everything had changed so much, but the stars were still the same. Timeless. She was staring up at them, mesmerized because it was rare to see them so bright, so present in the sky. So bright she could see millions of them and also the milky way too. In her time, Boston had provided too much light pollution to see all the stars properly. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going and stumbled into an old campsite.
She didn’t see the lurking animal until it was too late. A massive paw struck her from behind and sent her sprawling. She barely had time to see what had attacked her before a set of jaws closed around her. A mutated bear of some sort was attacking her! She blindly started punching the wild animal, but she was no match for its ferociousness. Where was Dog? Was he ok? She scrambled for her weapon, but the bear was on her again, tearing into her. She tried to pull out her 10mm but her arms didn’t want to cooperate.
“Dog!” she cried out, “Help me!” Dog flew at the bear providing a much needed distraction and she rolled out of the way. Shots were fired but they didn’t come from her weapon. She looked around the old campsite frantically, but blood was flowing into her eyes, obscuring her view. More shots were fired, an animal screaming in pain. Was that Dog? “DOG?!” she cried. She tried to sit up, but was in too much pain. She heard footsteps, shouting, people were here. Shit. People. She didn’t know if they were the good guys or the bad guys. The bear was not attacking her anymore so she took a moment to lay down and rest, just to rest for a bit. Don’t sleep! Her mind screamed at her. OK, no sleep, just rest.
Footsteps near her. “Corporal, she’s still alive!” A pair of blue eyes were above her, looking at her with concern.
“Don’t waste any stims on her, she’ll probably die anyways.” She heard a female voice reply.
“I have..stim, in my pack...please help me,” Keira managed to get out between gasps for air.
“OK, I got you. I got you. You’re going to make it.” The blue eyed man in green fatigues and a hat with two bullets in the brim reached for her pack and dug out her last stimpack, and jammed it into her without delay.
She could feel her skin stitching together slowly, but one stim would not be enough, she needed a doctor. This was serious. “My dog…” She tried to reach out for her canine friend.
“Your dog is OK, he saved your life.” She looked into the calm blue eyes and relaxed, and promptly blacked out.