Vanilla's Box

I. To be buried is a warm, comforting feeling. There’s a cozy sensation somewhere in the saltine, tingly media. Not quite sand. Sand would be too coarse, too loose, subject to the wind and the interloping forces of the Sun. The sand is the agent of these forces, shaping and cutting into flesh and stone alike. That’s not what she feels. Not quite dirt, either. Under different circumstances, perhaps, but if this was ever dirt, it had long ago changed. Into the bristles of dead twigs and mosses, primordial and comfortable, fitting and deserving. This was mud. She was face down in the mud. 

The slow and deliberate process by which the brain sends its signals from its hallowed depths towards the extremities of the body it’s attached to may seem like mere milliseconds in time, but for the brain, it is a process immeasurable. Synchronization and acknowledgement, the brain is a network, a delicate weapon. It was ultimately a shame this one was attached to her. Scavver. Mirelurk humper. Yes, she was by no means a delicate woman. And this accentuated it. Groaning, filled with a bilious dread, a dull ache pounding at her unfortunate skull, she rose from her would-be grave, wiping the briny silt from her brow. Soon, she recalled the trembling that one should feel when being south of The Wire. A feeling especially felt during the Atomwinter. It could have only been described with the most base of commands, uttered in the first moments of a still idling mind:

GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

Her pale eyes, caked and bloodshot, darted above the lip of her trench. The world around her was quiet, the subtle shuffling of the dirt shrugging from her frame as she slowly, cautiously raised her head. The sky above her set a mottled black, intermingled with the dark grey of the clouds above. Grasping at the ring of the hole, she would begin to pry herself up from it, careful to avoid the splinters and shrapnel that made up the floor of the Glowing Sea’s “shoreline.” Shaking the excess off of her overcoat and coveralls like a wet dog, she took a moment to assess her location, and where she needed to go. Then she heard the first crack coming from behind her. 

It whizzed past her, not at all a close shot, but the zip of a rifle round was unmistakable, and for her, way too close to comfort. Not taking the time to see who or what was aiming at her, she ran forward blindly, stumbling first, her boot caught on something after the first ten or so yards. Falling again into the next hole, she quietly cursed herself. In a hole, yet again, this time knowing someone out there has it out for her. Peeking out? The very option drew shivers down her spine. They saw her enter the hole. Their scope must already be zeroed in, adjustments made. The next shot wouldn’t be a miss.

But waiting wasn’t an option either. In a minute or so, she could have a whole squad of either Divided or Rangers bearing down. She didn’t like her chances with the Atom cultists, and if the Minutemen saw her, they might just remember how much she owed the Logistics Coordinator at Nahant, and could put her in the Quarry for it. All she could think about was seeing the muted, spacey gaze of the parolees that work the docks in Quincy, and the marks on their necks from the sleds they pulled. Her attention was diverted when she heard a raspy shouting from where that bullet came from.

“COME OUT of the hole with your HANDS UP!”

She froze for a moment, her mind still filled with uncertainty, until another shot rang out, zipping over the crater. Another voice accompanied, this one lighter, but all the more authoritative. “We won’t tell you twice! This is your last warning!” Instinctively, her hands reached out over the lip of the hole, trembling. Footsteps could be heard, and as she raised her head to stand, she could see two flashlights, piercing the pockmarked ground as their sources jogged over to their prey. As they came to view, the silhouettes of a uniformed man and a woman revealed that her pursuers were Blues. Not Rangers, but Minutemen regulars. The scavver sighed, defeated, hands still in the air. “Good God, you look like shit. Who are you? What the hell are you doing south of the Wire?” chimed in the female officer, taking a moment to sling a scoped service rifle over her shoulder, and shine the light directly into the poor scavver’s eyes. Instinctively, she winced and moved her hand to cover her eyes, to which the other officer instinctively readied his sidearm. He ordered. “KEEP your HANDS up!” The female officer stepped in. “Christ, Kelly, put the gun down, she’s obviously a civilian.” Feeling the weight of rank on him, Kelly complied and holstered his 1911. She must have been a Specialist or something, she had extra tabs on her lapel. Kelly tried a different approach. “Well, civ? This is a restricted area. Speak up.” The scavver furrowed her brow and shook her head, as if manually cataloging the last few days. She was working with a caravan as extra protection, she had a weapon. Supplies. She was supposed to go from the Forest Grove Locks to… somewhere. The exact purpose escaped her. There was a huge void that hung over her head. “I, uh… I don’t know. I… don’t know.”

The next few hours were a haze, with the Blues escorting the scavver to their post just south of Quincy. She didn’t fully remember the path in which they took, only that after clearing a hill, they descended into an array of hastily-dug trenches, though some sections were seemingly being reinforced with wooden beams. Despite the construction, the corridors were largely empty, with only a small force keeping watch, their binoculars pointing southward. The familiar banner of blue of the crossed rifle and lightning bolt, lit solely by a jury-rigged lamp and a spot-welded bracket, complete with a cord connecting to what looked to be a renovated office building. Damaged by small arms and rocket fire, parts of it looked precarious and dilapidated, while other portions freshly patched. The Scavver knew the work crews would return in the morning. Hopefully they didn’t notice how, in her delirium,  she completely tripped over a bag of concrete and spilled some of its contents into the rivulet of brown water around the headquarters. A mess for someone else.

The Scavver felt deep within that something was dreadfully, dreadfully wrong with her. Not, like, mentally or emotionally, well, she wasn’t worse than usual. She felt sick, her vision doubling and her body growing weak, the world around her undulating and shifting in unnatural, uneven ways. During her dazed march from the edges of the Glowing Sea, she stopped several times to vomit, though nothing came out. It was akin to a hangover, but much much worse. It was absolutely revolting. After getting a full hose down with a few pails of questionably sourced water and a temporary change of clothes from the store-room, her reflection showed a cleaner albeit still disheveled woman, with ruddy, ragged hair that hung on her shoulders like a chestnut colored mop, pale, pockmarked skin, and a thin frame that held her borrowed fatigues like a clothes hanger. The very sight prompted her to vomit, though it wasn’t due any physical discomfort with her reflection, at least not this time. A visit to the camp medic confirmed what the two Blues were expecting to be wrong with her. “Minor traumatic brain injury, compounded by acute radiation sickness, several contusions, lacerations, the works. The latter comes with the territory here.”

The surprisingly bright room around the scavver and the female specialist was quiet, with only the gentle tick of a Nuka-Cola clock cutting through the early morning air. The medic, one sergeant Isa Vickers, blankly glanced at the ragged survivor, expecting some sort of answer, an explanation, something. The Scavver just glanced back. “So… what do I do?” The medic gave a slight hmmmph and grabbed a tray from a table behind her. It revealed a plastic pouch of an ochre fluid, connected to some vinyl tubing, with something sharp at the end. 

“I’m sure you’re familiar with other methods of reducing radiation sickness but Radaway is the best I got on hand right now. Now, I need you to take your left shoulder out of your shirt.” Her tone shifted from a dry, no-nonsense, nearly monotone voice to a caring yet firm tone. A teacher’s tone, or that of a distant mother. Feeling too weak to really put up a fight, she shrugged and slid the scratchy ripstop cotton from her left side. “So where are you going to put it?” The medic set the tray on a rolling table by the chair the Scavver was sitting in, and additionally took a seat on a stool next to her. Humming, she reached to a box and pulled out a pair of heavy gloves, to which she lamented. “You know, I heard once that, long before the collapse, they had single use gloves for things like this? They would just throw them away, and get a new pair when the task was completed. God. Imagine the waste, but oh, also imagine the convenience…” 

Commissioned from @404deus