. Walking into the tunnel. Black. More black than anything. I remember I have my Pip-Boy 3000. I turn the light on and see Feral Ghouls all around. They come at me. More black.

My life has been destroyed. Broken into remnants of life before the nukes went off. The remnants of the hell that rained upon us. My name is Slade. I am 23 years old. My parents died in the 2 hour war. I'm a scavenger, a mercenary, and a contract killer.


So, I was walking into the bar to get myself a drink. Gob, the bartender, was a ghoul. Not a feral ghoul, just a person who got too much radiation exposure. Me and Gob were best friends. He got me my drink and asked,
"Hey, Slade, did you hear about that job Dr. Smith put out?"
This got me intrigued.
"A job?"
"Yeah. When the Super Mutants invaded his old office, he left his whole med supply. He wants it back."
I thought on this. Is it worth it? What do I have to live for? My family is dead. There is only survival. Just doing the next necessary thing. And that was what made me think. This is the next necessary thing.

I need the money, and I might grab some of his supply while I'm at it. So, I told Mo that I was off and headed over to Dr. Smith's shack. I knocked on the door.
"What do you want!"
"I heard about your job."
"What? There's actually someone crazy enough to take this on?"
"Well," I said, "I guess that's me"

Dr. Smith was old, grouchy, and commanding. But, he still had a soft spot that came out every once in a while. He was dark skinned, with a white lab coat and a white goatee. For the first time, I actually wanted to take a job. It seemed profitable, and really simple, with just some minor setbacks.
"So," Smith said, "You actually want to take this"
I said yes.
"I want my med supplies in 48 hours. I'll take 15 caps away from your final pay for every hour that you're late. There should be 40 morphine-shots and about 15 syringes of Methamphetamine."
"So, I said "What are we looking at for prices here?"
"1200 caps. Final."

So, I was off. Out of the safety of Megaton. Now anything can happen. As usual, there were Raiders outside of Megaton. Only two. Raiders are a gang, they're cowards, and they're fairly unorganized. The Raiders are rivaled with the Talon Company Mercs. I swiftly took the two out with a Plasma Pistol attached to my thigh before they could even shoot at me.

About 3 hours later, I was approaching the street that Dr. Smith's old office was on. A lone Super Mutant was scavenging. He saw me. Crap. As if my vision was slow motion, the mutant ran towards me, pulling out a nail board as it went. I quickly pulled out my Gauss Rifle, a single shot shooting Microfusion cells, and used VATS to aim for the head. VATS is Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. It pulls up a computer screen, showing the main body parts of any enemy. You can then decide which to aim for by scrolling through, and simply hit fire. The rest is history. Or at least their body parts are. I aimed for the head and hit "FIRE!". The glowing ball of plasma hit the mutant's face, with a shockwave coming around. As the plasma cleared up, I saw that it had only blown off half of the face. With it's last will, the Mutant ran towards me, and fell at my feet.

"Wow! That was awesome!" I heard in a southern accent.
A man walked out. He had a handlebar mustache and cowboy hat. I wondered how he's lasted out here as long as he did.
"Where you headed to?"
"A doctor's office" I replied
"Me too!"

What a load of crap. He started following me and I just let him. I had too many problems to deal with, and he wasn't helping. We kept going, with him rambling about his bouts with death and all of his bragging. We finally made it within 200 yards of the office. The guy said
"I'll go first!"
The man walked toward the office. I trailed about 150 yards behind him. All of a sudden, as he got close, he dropped to the ground.
"Oh god. This is the worst head ache-"
Then he started vomiting. Retching uncontrollably. It was a radiation pocket. There was a radiation pocket around the office. The man slowly crawled towards me. I couldn't risk going towards him, even with the radiation resistant Power Armor. He rested for a minute, then just jumped up.
"Ain't nothin' ol' Gregg can't handle!"
The walking ghost phase. From the looks of it, all symptoms were sped up because of the extreme dose.

As quickly as this man that calls himself ol' Gregg came in, another person came. This wasteland always has more surprises for me. The boy was wearing Raider Painspike Armor. The armor must have been over 20 years old. The leather was cracking and peeling. He looked about 17. He had red hair and was skinny.
"I might be able to help..." I heard from him in a timid voice. "I know a way in, from the basement next door. We have to go through a tunnel. There's still a little radiation, but you have Power Armor and you can take some Rad-Resist pills. My name's Xander, by the way"
"And what about this guy?" He asked.
ol' Gregg waved over to us.
"Walking Ghost State" I simply replied. "It seems like the symptoms got sped up from the high dosage. The affects should be coming about... now."

Right on queue, the man named ol' Gregg started bursting into a laughing fit. Laughing uncontrollably. He was moving to a state of delirium, the first sign of sure death by radiation, which comes right after the Walking Ghost State, where they feel totally fine.
"They're crawling all over me! They're tickling me! Haha! They're so funny!" He was rolling on the ground and looking at a rock, trying to get it to talk.

Soon, poor ol' Gregg would be going into a coma. There was nothing to do but move on.

We walked over to a bombed out a house a few doors down. It reminded me of old pictures of bombed-out Germany in WWII. Xander led the way and jumped down the ladder. There was a barrier of debris and sandbags and such. Xander pulled out a small chunk of C4 with a detonator antenna coming off it. He planted it on the pile and told me to step back. BOOM! The explosives went off. I could see he was shaken by that. I quickly ran through the dust, just wanting to get this over with now. All this for some Morphine and Methamphetamine. I continued through, only to hear,
"WAIT!"
I was knocked on to the ground, with a Feral Ghoul on top of me. I quickly unsheathed my shocksword, a sword with electrical pulses running through it. By the looks of it, there were six ghouls. I took care of them with the shocksword. Xander asked,
"How did you do that? That was death defying!"
I ignored him. I seem to have a habit of doing that. I kept moving until I saw a door saying "Amadeus Smith M.D." I was in the home stretch. I got into the basement and there it was. The supply.
"My money?"
I handed him 200 caps and told him to go away. He gladly obliged. I hauled the crate back to Megaton. I got paid. Everyone was happy again. Until the NEXT necessary thing.

~The End~