For No One [Fallout / The Ghoul / Cooper Howard] ON PAUSE

01

"There's been more and more of them showing up around here."

"They'll start coming out of the cracks now that those meds are out to help them with their condition."

"I just don't get it. Who in their right mind would help them kind?"

"Hey, who knows? Maybe in a few years, they'll be working the shitty bars like this one."

"Don't say that. I get nauseous just from being in the same room as them. They radiate that sick shit. You know what happened to my neighbor, right?"

An eavesdropping young woman looked up from three bottles of bourbon in front of her as the conversation between the two guards that had just ended their evening shift seemingly got more intense. The bottles had been empty for almost an hour now, but she was still feeling the effects as her head spun and her eyes got heavy. Most nights over the last year started out looking like this, usually with triple the amount of empty bottles surrounding her, only to eventually end with her passed out halfway buried in a ditch or upside down in a dumpster. She had so much on her mind and no clue how to go about it, but that would all change soon. All she needed was a sign and she would make the comeback that she had been mustering up the courage to do.

One of the guards shook his head with confusion. The other leaned in as if it was a matter of total confidentiality. The woman found herself also leaning in, nearly falling out of her chair. From where she was several seats away from the guards, they didn't even notice. The second guard said, "She fucked this ghoul that was passing through and died from the inside out."

"What?!" The first guard asked in shock, but it was clear that part of him believed it as his eyes beckoned for his colleague to continue. He only nodded solemnly as he said, "She was growing a little baby feral one and it tore her up within a few weeks."

She chugged a carton of water that was next to her as she felt the contents of her stomach threatening to come back up. The thought of a feral ghoul growing inside of her, or anything for that matter, was enough to make her even sicker than any liquor. When she thought it couldn't get worse, she overheard one of the guards say, "I'm not surprised. I heard that Erica girl was messing around with a ghoul and that's why she looks like that lately."

"Erica from our unit? That would explain the rashes all over her face. Poor girl is barely a day over twenty, but she looks like one of the founding fathers if you were to open up their casket right now."

Both of them laughed at this. The eavesdropping woman, on the other hand, felt herself getting sick beyond the help of just water. She wobbled out of the chair before making her way out the front door only to be bumped by several screaming people that came running past her from outside.

People screaming and running from something in Ash Canyon was not only typical every night, but almost expected. If people weren't screaming and running around when it got dark, then something was probably wrong. As the people scrambled inside the bar to what they hoped was safety, she stumbled backwards from the commotion and only kept herself from falling by grabbing the frame of the door that was still open. Once her vision wasn't so blurred, she continued out towards the streets of the place she had been calling home recently.

She passed several other Ash Canyon citizens who were walking faster than normal and seemed to be whispering with frantic eyes and paranoid looks behind them. She didn't care that she was walking in the very direction of where people were trying to get away from. In her drunken state, she almost hoped that there was something at the end of the road that was capable of putting her out of her misery.

"Boy, if you think you can just step foot in our town thinking you run the place, you got another thing coming!"

As she got to what was considered the town square where traders set up booths and worked around the clock, she recognized the man's voice. It belonged to the self-proclaimed mayor, Prius, who appointed himself the title because he was there when Ash Canyon was formed and killed anyone who wanted to run against him. It had been that way for at least five decades which was long before the woman had even been born.