Navarro

Chapter 3: There is a person under all this power armor?

— You are not an ordinary private. At my base, they don't know half of your words. You're smarter than most of these morons. I want to know who you are. And don't make an fool out of me, Becker.

— I'm an ordinary private... Or what? You interested in hearing about the poor orphan who was turned into a piece of ice? And who was a wanderer for four years?

Sergeant narrowed his eyes and slammed his hand on the switch that locked the door. The door to his chambers obediently slid down, cutting us off in his office and apartment. By this way he made it clear that he was listening and didn't want information to be disclosed. I won't tell him the truth. Otherwise i will be considered as a lunatic. I will say something that does not contradict the realities of this world. After hesitating a little, I turned to his desk, rearranging the papers and further:

— Okay, fine... I was born a few years before the start of the Great War, as you call it, in two thousand fifty-six. In fact, there was a war before that, for ten years. I think you already know it. When I was only three, war with China already began. Not obvious at first, but then more and more noticeable. But when you are a child, and war comes to your home, willy-nilly you become a militarist. And a child who absorbs everything like a sponge, even more so. And when I turned eighteen, my parents simply pushed me into the cadet corps. They were both military men, and they died in the service, leaving me in the care of the army. But in place where we were trained, Vault-Tec operated. They purposefully searched for the best people. However, by the end of the seventy-sixth, they began to train us all without exceptions. I've never been the best. I was an ordinary pilot. All I could do was sit my pants in the cockpit while my stronger and more agile friends were below. But I, nevertheless, was taught posture, discipline, order. And so, to the day before the end, on twenty-second of October two thousand seventy-seven, they drove us into Vault one-eleven'th, locked us in capsules, saying that they would disinfect us in them, and then darkness fell. Darkness was cold and thick like a stone. When we woke up from a malfunction of the cryogenic installation, out of a thousand of us there were only one hundred and fifty survived. The rest suffocated in the capsules due to malfunction of emergancy lock systems. They either woke up and slowly died of sufforcation inside, or died with same reason in cryogenic sleep. It was two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven.

We weren't prepared for what we would see. Boston, where we were, turned into ruins. There was nothing waiting for us there. We just went to the base, picked up weapons and clothes, and generally collected everything that wasn't bolted to the floor, we decided to go to the west. So we just left. There was no goal, we just walked away. Away from dead friends, from destroyed home, from painfull memories, from everything that we left behind and in the past.

But the road wasn't easy. One by one, but our friends found his death. Each of them died in their own way. Some people didn't eat on principle, fearing illnesses, and after our supplies ran out, they died of starving.

Someone was irradiated to death. They were too reckless, picking and touching everything without thinking how it could end for them.

Someone was torn to pieces by mutants. It was a lot of 'em on our way. Supermutants, Deathclaws, Night Stalkers, feral ghouls, radscorpions, damn, once, our friend Billy was killed by pack of unknow mutants, who looked like big bats. We had to either run, or shoot. But the bullets weren't endless. By the end of first year we left without suplies at all. So we had to do the dirties work, just to earn caps for the food and bullets. And from that the next cause of deaths follows.

Slavery and forced prostitution. A lot of our girls were very pretty. Boys were handsome as well. And some of us, who went mad from hunger, fear and life on bottom of food chain, "earned" caps, by selling our guys to those pieces of shit. We were too weak to release them by force, and too beggar, to give a ransom for them. That still tortures me in a sleep. Each time in sleep see those doomed faces and walk away, hearing their soul-destroying screams of despair, and don't turn back, just because you don't have a choice.