Chapter 2 “Don’t touch that.”

Rosie staggered and stumbled down from above the Vault. Following the vague path that remained visible even after all this time. Every unexpected rock or soft patch of earth made Rosie regret her quick thinking, not for the first time. Her improvised footwear meant stopping often. Perfect for climbing, not so great at walking along uneven ground. Something a lifetime of flat corridors left her ill prepared for.

Rosie managed to pull a snippet of music from the air before she started to descend. Not enough to recognise any of it, but more than enough to motivate her. Someone must be playing it, and others must be listening. Rosie tried to stay focused, knowing she was headed in the exact opposite direction to John. He wouldn’t have made that climb, he barely liked being that tall.

Every step she took put more distance between them, and thanks to his stubbornness, she had no food or water. Rosie kept a steady pace. Turning south with the path as she reached ground level, and finding it mercifully flat. As long as she weaved around the rubble in her path.

As she walked Rosie began to understand the new, old world around her. It must have been some sort of construction site that never got beyond the foundations. Stacks of long steel girders. Roads ending in nothing. Old machinery stripped bare, which really caught her eye because she knew that someone had to do that. There was life out here, at least at one point. Although the ever present, deafening silence gave no clue as to when that could have been.

Rosie stopped to adjust her footwear, again, and checked the map screen. Out in the open, the high frequency pulses were far less effective, returning blotchy data. Not like the crisp lines of the Vault. Still enough to show a clear path to the south that would have to cross the wide road at some point. Then she could head west, hopefully gaining on John.

She worried about him more than herself. Being slim and a foot shorter, she could hide, duck down, crawl under stuff. Plus she had a light step, none of which applied to John. That thought was enough to get her moving, and ignore her growing thirst.

The construction site faded from view as Rosie pressed on. Walking past haulage trucks, crashed and picked clean, leaving empty metal shells by the side of the road. Following a remnant of the road seemed the best idea. It must connect to the main road, although she thought it would have by now, especially as the blood red leaves began to reach overhead.

Being in the red forest provided welcome relief from the sun, creating a flickering effect as it punched through patchwork canopy. Trying to look up into the endless blue just made her dizzy. But she couldn’t help stare at the leaves, misshapen, irregular, yet alive. More than that, thriving in a world with fewer people, expanding, taking over more space. And if they were doing that it meant there must be water.

Thinking of the word amplified Rosie’s thirst. Going this long without water in the Vault wasn’t uncommon, longer during emergency rationing. This however felt different, not knowing where the water was made it all the worse. She checked the map screen. Hoping for some sort of indication may have been picked up by the automatic pulses. No such luck, just hazy and ill defined shapes due to the forest of blackened trees.

Again Rosie stopped to adjust her increasingly poor footwear. Finding the unfamiliar soil soft enough to walk on in just the hard wearing socks. Made from the same material as the advanced vault-suit she wore, that they all wore. It brought a welcome new sensation for the woman who only ever walked on steel and rock every day of her twenty five years.

Those days were gone now she told herself, even if John found the parts she wouldn’t be taking them back. They put her on shit detail for months at a time for trying to help them, who knows what they’d do for killing the Overseer. A pang of guilt brought doubt with it.

Rosie always regretted losing her temper eventually. Mostly when she had to tell John about it. He rarely, if ever, lashed out like she did, and he regretted it instantly. Maybe he wouldn’t care this time she told herself, they both hated the Overseer, he’d just be happy to see her. At least they could be together now.

The forest began to thin, forcing Rosie to tie the rubber soles around her feet again. The laces chaffing at her heel and between her toes almost instantly. Years of boots always a size too big meant it wasn’t an uncommon feeling, another thing she wouldn’t miss. Rosie began to see a cluster of ruins ahead. Derelict concrete shapes collapsed and abandoned long ago, built around a narrow road that must connect to the main one. It gave her hope that she might catch up to John, at least she’d be heading in the same direction.

The endless blue went from covered in shifting white blobs, to greys and black. She knew what it meant, she remembered night from the children’s stories, that was when the monsters came. Her rational adult mind told her that even if killer robots were real they would likely be scrap by now. Like the cars she’d seen, and she felt sure they were never actually fuelled by human blood.

Rosie tried to distract herself with the radio, nothing but static. Then by imagining what the buildings around her might have been. Anything not to think about water, or food. Or the twinge of rising anger she felt towards John for his hard-headedness, harder than the damn rocks he broke, for putting them in this position. Both of them alone, separated, further apart than they’d ever been. Even the kids in stories stayed in pairs.

The buildings continued to surround her as darkness fell over everything. Rosie still tried to distract herself by inspecting the ruins she passed. Pretending that she wasn’t desperate to see a trace of water amongst the collapsed concrete structures. One looked to be filled with cars. Another tall and square, with windows in repeated patterns like the Vault she’d escaped from. Nothing to indicate there would be anything to drink inside, even if she wanted to stop and look.

A loose chunk of blacktop caught the rubber sole of her improvised footwear. Forcing her to stop and readjust the increasingly uncomfortable remnants of her boots. Rosie cursed her bright idea as she tightened up the laces. Yet again she thought something up that was an ideal solution, implemented it, and then had to live with the consequences. Patience and restraint were never her strong suits. She sat in the middle of the street a while longer, trying not to let her frustration get the better of her. When something outside a collapsed entrance caught her eye. Red, lying on its side, white writing just about visible.

Rosie walked over to it and saw instantly what it was. A refrigeration unit, broken, tipped over, but worth checking for something to drink. Rosie wedged the flat end of the crowbar into the seam of the door. Scraping, scratching, metal screeching against metal as Rosie worked the drop forged steel tool further in. Levering it back and forth, until the door popped open. Hitting the ground with a loud clatter, sending a single glass bottle rolling out.

Rosie dropped the crowbar immediately as she scrambled after the rolling bottle of dark liquid. Desperate to drink whatever it was. She grabbed it, stood and turned. Dropping the precious drink in shock as she saw three people surrounding her.

“Gimme what you got!” A sickly looking man demanded of her, brandishing a rough hewn blade. Flanked by an equally sickly looking man and woman. All wearing crudely made scrap metal chest armour. Rosie froze in confused panic, people were alive, yet that didn't seem like a good thing right now. “You hear me bitch, gimme what you got!”

“I don’t have anything, not even water.” Rosie slipped the retractable knife from her cuff, the only thing she did have, and gripped it tight. She recognised something in the people around her. Twitching, pupils pinned, they were addicts. High and unpredictable, just like her mother. Be calm, be passive, but be ready, she told herself, remembering the lessons of her childhood. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll help you get it.”

“Chems, booze, caps, hand ‘em over!” He wasn’t listening to her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything, why don’t I go and find some for you.” That always worked on her mother, especially when Rosie returned with a can of solvent.

“That thing on your arm, give it to us, it’s gotta be worth a few caps." The sickly woman snarled through rotten teeth. Rosie was surprised it took them this long to notice her beloved pipboy.

“I’ve worn it for years, it doesn’t come off.” Rosie lied, although she’d never considered taking it off, it was far too useful to be without.

“Oh I’ll get it off.” The man waved the barely sharp piece of scrap repurposed as a weapon in her face. “Hold her down.” Rosie didn’t wait for them to advance any further. She lashed out with the retractable knife, slashing the face of the blade wielding man. He hardly reacted, his senses dulled by whatever coursed through his veins. She bolted, but her improvised footwear gave out instantly, leaving her face down on the blacktop at the worst possible moment.

“Dose her! She’s making too much noise.” The female attacker ordered as her male cohorts held Rosie down by her arms. She bucked, kicked, and screamed, desperate to get away. She felt a sharp pinch in her thigh, causing her vision to blur, her limbs to grow heavy. Then she felt a level of pain she didn’t think existed.

Just below her elbow the man with the slashed face forced the dull blade through her soft, pale skin, splitting the flesh. Rosie nearly passed out from the excruciating agony. Then almost blunt scrap hit bone, and stopped, sending an increased aftershock of pain though her entire body.

In that moment Rosie thought she was about to die, out here alone, like the foolish children in the stories. Then the pain vanished. Rosie felt a sense of calm unlike anything she’d experienced before. No pain, no fear, even her heartbeat seemed to slow. Something impossible appeared inside her tightly shut eyes, blinking in pipboy green,

*TRAUMA DETECTED EMERGENCY COMBAT PROTOCOLS ENGAGED*

Rosie opened her eyes. The world became brighter, sharper, light amplified, details magnified. And something else, something not possible, yet happening before her eyes. The slashed face dripped blood at a slow rate. The sadistic faces twisted into snarls moving impossibly slowly. Their bodies highlighted in a green outline, and code even she couldn’t read scrolling down the edge of her vision.

Electricity swelled up through her spine. Overtaking every nerve in her body, supercharging them, priming them for action. The green code disappeared just as fast it appeared and showed a single word.

*EXECUTE*.

The pipboy housing sent a jolt of power through the sickly arm holding it down, knocking the man back. His slashed face seemingly not yet aware of the damage done to him. Rosie became almost a passenger in her own body, finding strength she didn’t have a moment earlier. Pulling her right arm free and kicking the woman holding her feet square in the face. Green dotted lines drew her focus to the dull blade wedged in her left arm. She tore it free with her right, and drove it up into the exposed throat of the crouched second man, following the lines in her vision.

In an almost nightmare, dreamlike state Rosie got to her feet and time snapped back. She heard the man behind her slump forward, driving the dull blade right through his neck as he hit the ground. At her barely covered feet, a body lay motionless, smoking burns up his track marked arm. Rosie locked eyes with the woman, cupping her broken nose, her pinned eyes wide with terror. Rosie didn’t feel anything, no pain, no fear, nothing. She just walked away, not noticing the spent injector stuck in her thigh till it was too late, and passing out cold.

Rosie woke by the side of the eight lane road she’d be trying to get to. Pain in her arm, her legs, and the back of her head. She gingerly felt the back of her head. Brittle red hair matted with dried blood, chunks torn out, as she turned she saw why.

The woman that attacked her had dragged her drugged, unconscious, body to meet another group of people on the road. Rosie tried to get her bearings as she pretended to still be slumped semi-conscious by the edge of the forest at the side of the road.

As the woman yelled and argued with the others Rosie took a moment to check her map screen. Finding the pipboy rebooted, filled with new notifications that she resisted the urge to dive into.

She looked around, trying to make sense of where she was. Hoping to see a way to run, but something whispering from the back of her mind told her not to. An odd thought told her about the long metal shapes these new, masked, people held. A mix of twelve gauge pump actions, and seven six two millimetre automatic rifles. The words made sense to her, but she couldn’t explain how she knew these things. It didn’t seem to matter, if they were friends with the woman, they were not friends of hers.