Hiding In The Green: A Fallout 4 Story

Jonny-say-Quoi Goes Exploring

The Repository Vault had been built under the Concord Free Public Library, and quite a few surplus copies of books had made it into the Vault before the world ended. Very few of those left in the Library itself had survived, between being burned and soaked into solid masses of wood pulp by rain through the holes in the roof. Jonny-say-Quoi tut-tutted at the mess as he left the building. He wasn't expecting much of the town proper to be intact, and indeed it wasn't. The wreckage of the town was populated by packs of wasted, skinny feral mongrels which snarled and tried to bite him, and the few people he saw were the human equivalent, which snarled and tried to bludgeon him.

Had the other Miss Queens who left the Vault over the years run into such creatures, human or canine? Was that why they all failed to return? It grieved him to think so. Picking his way through the rubbish-choked streets, he spiraled outward through the town center, analyzing the air quality. The oxygen levels were low, but not too low to support life, obviously. He was more concerned about the lack of any vegetation beyond dead, scrubby weeds.

Unless his chronometer was unpardonably wrong, it was mid-May, when spring should be at its height, but it looked more like the dead of winter. He saw not a leaf on a tree nor any green and growing thing—unless one counted some of the cockroaches, bloated till they were the size of breadboxes. Some of them were green, and very aggressive, too.

After spending a couple of days exploring Concord very thoroughly, he decided there was nowhere in the town itself which was either safe or suitable for Miss Raina to establish a base, and broadened his search to the surrounding area. About eight miles from the town limits, he found a Red Rocket Truck Stop near the banks of a creek. It was in fairly good condition and could, he thought, be made habitable.

More interesting than the truck stop was the dog he found there. Instead of a scabby starveling mutt with a narrow brain pan, it appeared to be a purebred German Shepard with meat on its frame, a cared-for coat, and intelligent eyes. Instead of trying to savage him as the mongrels in the city had done, it barked sharply and waited for him to respond. That it recognized him as an entity equivalent to a human spoke well for its cognitive skills.

"Good dog!" he said to it, extending a mechanical hand. "Nice dog. What are you doing out here? Are you all alone?" It had to be owned by someone, as it was in perfect health.

The dog whined, and advanced carefully to nose Jonny-say-Quoi's hand, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. The wagging tail and cringing posture were submissive behavior—this dog understood what it was to live among humans and robots both. "Good dog!" It relaxed and allowed him to pet it and scratch behind its ears.

In this world, it was probably a very valuable animal. But if its human were newly dead... "Where is your master, boy? Your human? Where is he or she?"

The dog whined and led him down to the water's edge, where a cluster of hugely bloated flies—each the size of a seagull—were clustered around a—oh dear. A corpse, writhing with maggots. "That's what happened to him, is it?" Poor man." He killed the flies and built a cache of stones over the body while the dog watched, whimpering sadly as his human was covered from view.

Since he was by the water anyway, Jonny took readings, and discovered it was radioactive but not very. It could be purified.

"I believe you should come with me. Do you agree?" Jonny said to the dog.

The dog seemed to understand, because he barked and willingly followed Jonny back to the truck stop. On investigating the interior, he concluded from the signs of habitation that the dog and his owner must have lived there. The garage had an intact workshop furnished with tools, there was a filthy and decaying mattress in a closet area, and a rug which was half dog fur at the foot of it. There was a toilet with two buckets of water by it, suggesting that even if there was no running water, a bucket of water poured down it would effectively flush it. The roof did not appear to leak. Definitely a potential base.