Vol. III Chapter 14 “Touch of the old world blues."

Chapter 14 "Touch of the old world blues."

For some reason, Burton had pictured coming out into sunshine. Instead he found himself in darkness and unfamiliar surroundings. He staggered and stumbled along broken concrete. Scrambled over mounds of rubble too wide to go around. Everything he saw in this bleak world looked dead. No animals, no plants. Nothing but dark ruins and empty space.

The ground began to slope upwards as Burton hurried to reach the top. He sat, waiting for the sunrise. Darkness shifted into twilight, casting a bluish haze across the wasteland before him. An hour later, it still hadn't gotten much brighter. The sunlight obscured by heavy cloud and dust filled fog.

Even in the dim light, he began to make out shapes on the horizon. Skyscrapers he'd once coveted now stood as twisted remnants. Shining glass blown away, steel frames collapsed into each other. That's downtown, he thought, following the shifted terrain to where his own tower once stood. Through the binoculars, he managed to pick out a black strip and knew it had to lead somewhere. And hopefully to someone.

Burton walked the rest of the day. Some buildings remained intact. Row after row of houses, office blocks, shops and restaurants. All coated in dust like dirty snow. Nothing disturbed in years.

He tried to ignore the skeletons that dotted the landscape. Some behind the wheel of scrap cars. Some lay where they fell, running for their lives. Then he turned a corner and saw a pair sat on a bench, bone fingers interlaced. Burton envied them. I'm sorry Clara, he thought, I'm so sorry. He couldn't go any further, and sat on the ground, transfixed with the couple who stayed together no matter what.

As he sat, something caught his eye. Movement! Burton sprang to his feet just in time to catch sight of a person shape disappearing into a building. He found himself moving tactically towards the door, carbine levelled. He let the carbine hang, fighting the urge to have it ready.

"Hello?" The door creaked as he entered the old hardware store. Inside almost seemed normal, neatly stacked shelves, tins of paint half price. "Is anybody there?" He rasped in a voice that still sounded odd to him. Clattering from behind to counter drew him nearer.

He moved slowly into a dark break room, lit only by battery operated vending machines.

"I was...in an accident. I've been out here a while and…" Burton froze in shock. Lit by the glow of the vending machine, stood something that used to be a person. Flesh barely hanging on its bones, emaciated beyond starvation, and coal black eyes. Just like his. On an instinctual level, Burton knew that this would be his fate. That one day, perhaps centuries from now, he would end up a pathetic wretch like the one staring blankly at him.

Burton ran from the room, stopping to dry heave in a mop bucket.

Burton left the store, and the vision of his future, taking a moment to breath fresh air. He heard the creak behind him, and saw the hideous creature had followed him. It shambled after him, driven by the basic needs in what remained of its once human brain.

Burton summoned his nerve, then aimed the carbine right between the sunken black eyes. Something from the back of his mind bubbled up into a voice. Whosoever slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. "Fuck you!" Burton yelled, daring a God he didn't believe to exact even more vengeance upon him. He squeezed the trigger.

The burst of automatic fire at point blank range ripped the creature's head into chunks of rotten flesh. Its body fell backwards, spewing thick, inky blood from its neck. Burton hoped that someone would show him the same mercy.

As he started to walk away, a single shot rang out in the distance. The system immediately flashed an indicator in his peripheral vision. Remembering something from an old cowboy movie, he fired into the air. Another shot rang out in response and he ran towards the sound.

Burton slumped against a wall, breathless, his heart pounding. So desperate to see someone, anyone, that he almost walked out into the abandoned street. He had to be careful. It could be someone looking for him, the Vault, and the device on his arm. Or it could just be someone willing to kill him for his boots. He peered over the wall, carbine gripped tight, his adrenaline surging.

From the round the corner came a slight figure. Draped in a tattered canvas poncho, their face and head covered. Wearing what looked like ski goggles with a neon strap. The figure stopped, fiddling with the face covering. Then came three shrill blasts from an old tin whistle. They stood still, looking around, waiting for a response. This went on for a few minutes. Whistles, waiting, walking on and whistling again.

By now they were close enough for Burton to see they weren't a threat. He was stronger, faster, and considerably better equipped. As soon as they passed, he stepped out, carbine slung and hands raised. "I'm here. Listen, I was in an accident. I'm not sick or contagious." Burton took it as a good sign they didn't shoot him or run away screaming.

In one motion, the figure removed their head covering and goggles. "Hey there handsome!" Black eyes looked back at him. A gaunt face smiling. "Here I am thinking I'm gonna scare some poor soul half to death, and you're almost as pretty as I am!" She had a rasping tone, but filled with hope.

"Suzette Devereux, nice to meet you." She thrust a gloved hand out. Burton couldn't believe it, he had to ask.

"You worked for Blake Technical right?" Her eyes widened with surprise. Burton waded through his foggy brain. Trying to remember something, anything, about the woman he'd met a handful of times. "Your mother had a dress shop, near that old hotel?"

"Yes!" She grabbed his arms in sheer delight. "Have we met?" She looked thrilled, like finding a personal connection to the world before made it real. He couldn't help himself.

"Burton Blake." She flung her skinny arms around him, hugging him tight.

"Mr Blake! Praise the lord, you're still with us!" Well that secret lasted long, a voice said, scornful and mocking. You blabbed to the first person you met, pathetic.

"Shut up!" Burton blurted out, talking to the voice in his head.

"I didn't say anything." Suzette looked at him with sympathy.

"Listen, no one can know I'm alive." Burton fixed his gaze on her. "There might be people looking for...powerful people. From now on my name is…" He walked over to the nearest car, a faded sky blue Corvega sedan. Glass shattered as he struck it with the handle of his knife.

He ignored the stained seats and skeleton, checking the glove box. "My name is Virgil Nash." He read the name from the licence. Both the picture and his own face too damaged for it to matter.

"Ok, Virgil." Suzette smiled. He got the feeling that he was being humoured. "Come on, if we step lively we'll be home for supper." She took his hand and started walking, heading home for supper.

"Where are we going?" He asked his new companion.

"You'll see." Suzette could barely contain her excitement. He wondered what sort of home awaited them. "Wait." She unfolded an old map, tattered and faded. Not to mention inaccurate due to the seismic shifting and collapsed buildings. "This way." She turned down a side street.

"If you tell me where we're going I can help navigate." He didn't want to appear useless.

"And ruin the surprise, not a chance." She drew an old revolver from her hip, thumbing back the hammer. "Just kept an eye out for any food, water, or medicine." Suzette pushed the rotting wooden door of an apartment building and went inside. Burton hadn't so much as missed a meal since the bombs fell. "Oh and watch out for roaches. Big ones."

An hour later, they were back on the road. Suzette's buoyant spirits lifted further. A dozen sealed tin cans. Half bottle of expired antibiotics. A stack of vinyl records. It seemed a good haul to her.

Suzette talked and talked. Burton tried to listen, but got lost trying to picture what was. A bar he used to drink in, now collapsed. A tailor's shop he liked, now crushed under the rubble of another building. Then he saw something that stopped him dead. The restaurant where he proposed to Clara. Now a burnt out husk. He stood frozen. The memory vivid and crystal clear. As if it were really happening before him.

"Virgil." Suzette tried to reach him, he didn't respond. He felt a hand take his and gently pull him away.

"Sorry, I got…" Burton tried to find the words.

"Touch of the old world blues. That's what we call it." Suzette offered him a hip flask as she encouraged him to keep walking.

"We?" He asked, unsure as to what he wanted to hear.

"My lips are sealed." She bumped him playfully with her shoulder. "Or they would be if I still had any." Her upbeat manner made him smile.

"Not much further now." Suzette had been saying that for the last half mile. Almost telling him where they were going each time. She led him up a section of partially collapsed highway, through the long stationary traffic and stopped. "There she is. Blake Tower. Home." Suzette spoke of the building she'd worked on like an old friend. "It's even got power."

A tall lattice of girders seem to emerge from the dust clouds. Under construction when the bombs fell, Burton had thought it gone. Like so many other fully built buildings. Yet here it stood, defiant and strong.

"The shelter, people made it inside?" Burton had only designed the car park to be a shelter for the tax break.

"They did, although some of us were a little late." Suzette's spirit seemed to dim, but only for a moment. "Now it's not exactly a suite at The Grand, but it's safe, warm and dry. Come on, I'll buy you a drink." Suzette started walking while Burton lingered.

The red light atop the central core blinked like his lighthouse. Only not as a warning to stay away, as an invite to a safe place. He let out a breath he'd didn't realise he'd been holding. I did something good, he thought. Not enough, not even close. The voice in his head shot back, dashing the moment of respite.

He followed her down and through the last few blocks of still standing buildings. Burton intended to regenerate all of these old buildings, creating a new town, a new city. Now they stood as foothills to the tallest structure for miles. A skeletal steel headstone to the world, and man, that was.

"High tensile steel core supporting concrete additive floors. Strong but flexible. And they said it wasn't cost effective." The structural engineer turned scavenger bragged. He followed her through an abandoned and picked clean construction site to the black steel core. Suzette ran her hand along it as they descended the spiral stairs.

Four storeys down they came to a metal door. Suzette rapped on it rhythmically and a set of black eyes peered through the porthole style window. A heavy clunk preceded the door swinging open.

He stepped into the corridor, trying to smile and greet the man inside. "Arthur, meet Virgil." Suzette slammed the door behind her. Arthur grunted in Virgil's general direction. He wore a heavy rubber apron and gloves past the elbow on top of overalls.

"You find anything useful Suzie, or just another mouth to feed?" Arthur ignored him entirely.

"That's no way to welcome people Arthur." Suzette stood with her hands on her hips, chastising Arthur. "Keep that up and I won't save you any peach crumble." Suzette tipped her pack out onto a long table, set up for cleaning. A dozen tin cans without labels, various ammo, and a few tattered books. All contaminated with a thin layer of radioactive dust.

"How do you know they're peaches?" Arthur asked, shaking an unlabelled tin can.

"Got to be peaches eventually." Suzette smiled broadly. Her unstoppable optimism at odds with Arthur's gruff demeanour.

"This stuff too." Burton stepped forward, tipping out his own pack without thought for himself.

"Mre's, clean water, even a first aid kit." Arthur's face lit up. "Nice work Virgil. This'll really help." Arthur went to shake his hand but stopped due to the glove. "You go on through, I'll get this stuff logged and stored."

Burton headed to the end of the corridor and into a makeshift locker room. "See, making friends already." Suzette practically bounced behind him. She disappeared for a few moments as Burton sat on a simple metal bench. "Nothing from the outside past this point." Suzette put a pile of clothes down for him. "No guns either." She seemed pleased with that rule. "Find an empty locker, your things will be safe, I promise."

He changed out of the dusty fatigues and boots. Glad to be rid of bulky standard issue body armour. It still shocked him to see how gaunt he'd become. Able to see his enhanced musculature through his scarred and papery skin. The old hi tops, t shirt and jeans, were clean and fit well enough. However the knitted jumper did nothing to hide the pipboy.

"Suzette?" He called out. A moment later she appeared, rapping on the lockers.

"Hope you're decent." She leant on the lockers, staring at the pipboy on his arm.

"No one can know." His greatest work. His greatest shame. Now its jet black sheen reflected his cursed face back at him.

"Here, try this." She handed him a worn biker jacket. Black leather, zips along the forearms. "Looking good Virg."

"Virgil. I don't like Virg." He straightened the jacket, pulling at the flared cuffs. Then he followed her through the tarpaulin curtains.

Mismatched light bulbs were strung between concrete pillars. Seats from vehicles arranged round makeshift heaters. Huts built from car body panels. And people, hundreds of them. Burton stood still, like the new kid at school, unsure what to do.

"Here, take these." Suzette handed him a leather pouch.

"Bottle caps?" He asked, confused. 

"We started using them as tokens for food and water. They sort of became currency." Suzette pointed to the simple stalls selling scavenged junk. "People really like them, feels familiar I guess. Come on, let's eat."

Burton sat with strangers, politely declining food. Even those not ravaged by radiation looked pallid and gaunt. Still they laughed, enjoying what little they had. They deserve better, he thought.

That thought crystallised in his mind. Suddenly the fog cleared from his brain, like sunshine after a storm. Burton felt like himself again, and knew what he must do.

He spent the evening in the company of strangers. Suzette introduced him as Virgil, he kept his answers vague. He'd been in the army and survived in a backyard bunker. That leaked. Someone made a joke about suing Vault-Tec and he went white with fear. Or he would have done if his face were still capable.

Things quietened down as people went to sleep in huts, lean to's, and cars with papered windows. He excused himself to go to the bathroom. Trying not to picture the state of a system designed for half as many people for half as long. Then he made for the door.

He threw on his gear, and made it into the corridor unseen. Until he ran into Arthur. "I was…" He couldn't think of a lie that made sense.

"Relax." Arthur opened the door for him, but stood blocking it. "Listen, I lived out there for years. I get it. Shit, my first night here I felt like the whole damn tower was gonna fall in on me." He stepped aside, placing a hand on Burton's shoulder as he passed. "You've seen what happens to us, out there, right?" Fear filled his rasping whisper.

"Yes." Burton knew what he meant.

"Gone feral. You put 'em down?" He nodded, both hoping someone would do that for them. "It's not good to be alone, Virgil." He stepped aside.

"I'm coming back." Burton said to himself as much as Arthur.

"We'll be here." Arthur walked back down the corridor. To the people and laughter. Yes, you will, he thought.