A Terminal Case

  • A Terminal Case

    The squat brick building stuck out like a sore thumb, being surrounded by wasted buildings. So naturally, I approached it.

    The door put up a fight, being the only part of the building that seemed in disrepair, and, after checking for tripwires with a little probe, which I stuck under the thick old metal door, I finally resorted to a bit of plastic, which I had been saving for this sort of interesting situation (the past few days being a bore). Attaching it, the half an inch I had pinched off, right under the door, and punching it softly so as to make sure it stuck, I backed away, getting to the ground floor of the building across the street, and behind a wall, then a little round table, the top scorched a soulless obsidian, and a leg broken off.

    Reaching for the detonator in my left pocket, I felt silly for a second -- after my latest pack reorganization, I had always had it stored in the mesh on the back of my old military pack -- I hoped I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Pressing the conveniently colored red button, a bang like a dozen pistols (a sound I had heard before), lit out over my left ear, myself still hugging close to the table. After the dust had been given time to resettle, I stood up, and walked out of the blasted, empty doorway, and crossed the street, looking both ways like the old Pre-War books told the chillies to do. Reaching over my shoulder for my carbine, a hard-hitting weapon with common-enough ammo, I snuck a look inside, and was thankful that the inside seemed so pristine as the out.

    There was a comfortable chair that I sat in, after checking all the rooms, twice, where I found an old box of Sugar Bombs. I could almost feel the R’s emitting from them, but I choked down the treat anyways. Almost delicious.

    The fridge was empty, which was odd, I thought, though the cupboards were filled enough with snacks and candies, Dandy Boys and the like. I took them all, stuffing them in the other mesh bag on my pack, along with the meager supplies I had already stashed there. I was glad for a resupply. After a quick meal, which was the way all of mine were, I decided to explore the place more closely. Maybe there was a great story to this untouched building in the wastes.

    The terminal in what I guessed to be the den was the first thing I checked, and it didn’t have much. Something about some guy with a tumor or two, which was sad, but, ultimately, in the Mojave, incurable (unless you were House, but good luck with that). It looked like he had wanted to make it to to the Strip, and it said that he had the caps all ready and everything. “Now that would be a treat,” I thought at the time.

    I almost considered destroying the place, flipping the chairs and cutting the cushions for that fat sum, but I decided the better of it. Maybe I tell the NCR about it, and they make it some nice, pre-war shrine, the crazy buggers. Or the Legion. It sure would make a great slaver trading post, being a spacious flat. And chains wouldn’t really hurt the appearance of the already morbidly purple walls.

    After a decently thorough search, and I mean under chairs and cushions and microwave kitchenettes, the whole of the place, I left, a full stomach, and a contented feel that only a prospector gets, when they find a place untouched by nuclear war. In my pockets were a few trinkets, and an unopened bottle of delicious Nuka.

    After another boring day (interrupted only by one raider attack, but he didn’t even have a gun) I had decided to stop for the night, rest some, and maybe even find a bedroll or cot or something, which would be better than the floor and an old pillow like usual. Looking at the stars from the top floor of a roofless building, I almost felt blessed, having boring days so often. I heard that the lack of raiders had been due to some bad-ass that had followed the same path I was a few years before, wasting anyone who looked slightly antagonistic. I heard the guy wore a duster and cowboy hat and carried six weapons, using miniguns or 9mm’s, whatever he felt like on the day. There were rumors he had a small army, his love and his boy, and a robot. Some even said he had had the company of an invisible deathclaw, but I called BS on that more than once. Maybe that guy really was a hero. Or maybe he was just crazy.

    The morning came quick, and I begrudgingly woke myself up. Looking out what had probably been a window, or maybe a vent, I scanned the horizon. New Vegas wasn’t too far, I gathered, maybe forty miles. Things were getting slowly, slowly more populated.

    Two miles of travel stopped me in my tracks. Or, I should elaborate, what I saw did. It was another building, in similar fashion to the first I have chronicled, and, once again, untouched. The door, however, looked newer, like there had been a few years, or more,  between the creation of this one and the last. The door opened, with a bit of oil and some elbow-grease-powered kicks to its handle. It was just as beautiful inside, a Gothic sort of look.

    Being interested in whether or not this building was related to the last, I made a quick, unthorough check, uncharacteristic of me, and then proceeded to the terminal. The guy must have gotten crazy R’s since the last one, but otherwise not have touched much, because I had only really felt it near the door. This was when I first began to postulate that maybe this guy, who wrote in the terminals, hadn’t built these places, merely taken advantage of them, as I was now. Popping a Rad-X into my arm, I turned on the computer.

    The first entry into the terminal confirmed my suspicions, that he had run into something large and irradiated. He had hit a pack of ghouls. Describing them with vivid detail, it seemed he had barely escaped, and, in the process, had wasted what little ammo he had. The tale seemed oddly perpendicular to mine. We intersected, but that was about it. Maybe some of his luck had been saved for me by the Fates, or whoever governed Hell-on-Earth.

    I stocked up, then set out again, feeling more like I had a friend than I had since I left Utah.

     

    And then the next one came. It had been about twelve miles since the last, a day’s journey, and I had endured two dust storms since the last safehouse, which is what I had taken to calling them, in my own head. It was two stories, and looked out of an old western coloring book or something, my only exposure to that genre. This door was fresher than the others had been, a clean, clinical grey, contrasting the faux-log cabin look that made up the rest of the building’s exterior. It was, once again, untouched, and the door opened like it was only a few years old, only one screech was heard among the normal door-opening sounds, and the rush of dust into the sterile environs.

    Wiping my old boots on the old welcome mat in the old world entryway, I lost my senses, and went straight to where the terminal would be -- they were always in the same place, and I booted it up.

    Blood. Blood. Bloody, even. Perhaps…

    I thought the guy had gone crazy.

    So much. I don’t even know…

    Yeah, he had.

    To think I’d be strong enough to kill a man. That’s a negatory.

    Oh,” was what I had thought at the time. The entries had been getting shorter, though it seemed he had been spending longer in each place, unlike me -- I was moving relatively briskly.

     

    It having been twenty or so miles since I had left the last place, or two nights, I was beginning to let up my sense of suspense regarding the next one lapse, and the journey had been relatively normal, so much that I almost felt like I was strolling in some pre-war park, a polo shirt tucked tightly into my trousers.

    I was a third of the way through Freeside (this was after the expansions, mind you, so it was a good three mile walk through the slums), when a mob of beggars and scoundrels, or at least what I interpreted to be those, came running through the streets like they hunted a Frankenstein, and, seeing this, I ducked into an alley, which smelled of roquefort and diapers, or something like that. The banged on the door and the windows of a semi-ruined building, the only kind there was in Freeside. Only the door was stark white and clearly unblemished, and so I would wait until the mob left, then approach the place, where I might meet my perpendicular friend.

    They left, after twenty minutes or so, the least persistent mob I’d ever seen, and mumbled about how they could always come back later, for a high-quality murder.

    I walked to the door, knocked, heard nothing, and then tried the handle. Oddly, it was unlocked.

    The lights were dim, the walls a crispy brown, and the first door led to an all-dark basement, which I thought I might as well clear out. The stairs moaned like something from La Fantoma!, and it almost made me afraid. I turned on my flashlight, and searched around, seeing almost immediately a closed door, with yellow light beams coming under its margin. I made my way to it, along the way disarming three crude tripwires (I had seen it all, and this was simple). Opening the door, I was met with a guy on an armchair, his skin cracked and a bright green. He was approaching ferality, but still maintained an air of holier-than-thou.

    He said to me, “So here we are, ghoul to ghoul, eh? I suppose you know about the homey places? and that is why you’ve followed me here? and you’re how old now? two fifty? two ninety? well I’ve got you beat. I’m two ninety six, and I can remember every year of it. My ragged coat is no excuse for you to pass me off as some soulless reaver, and I don’t appreciate your judgement. So now, if you don’t leave now, you never will. Scat, kiddo, and get gone. I’ve got tumors up and down my liver, boy, so let me die without a bullet there too.”


    I left, not wanting to die that day, and, as he had told me, I got gone. I blew a few caps on the slots, and then I continued South, down the road to the Hub, where I sit today. I am disappointed, when I think of the time I met Perpendicular Man. Then again, I suppose, that’s all the Wasteland is, isn’t it? Sand and tumors, and a hell of a lot of disappointment.

Comments

2 Comments
  • ProbsCoolerThanYou
    ProbsCoolerThanYou   ·  September 1, 2015
    Thank you so much ShyGuy. I was hoping someone would get it.
  • ShyGuyWolf
    ShyGuyWolf   ·  September 1, 2015
    hey, you gave a shout out to AlChestBreach from YT.
    good story man.