vox in umbris

I pulled my old leather map folder from my pack and studied it, leafing through the sheets the best my stiff fingers would let me. Not far from here is an area marked with red hatching, with an exclamation mark adjacent. A roundhouse for the pre-war railways, where huge old world engines waited to pull trains across the width of the continent. Left to rust and fall apart, their powerful fusion cores leaking as their hulls crumbled away. The whole place was flooded with radiation, and that's where I now headed.

I was working on the assumption that whatever I had worked similar to ghoulification. If I could at least speed up the process, maybe I could at least get past the pain. The old me would be gone, atomised. But I could at least start again. I was desperate.

A day and a night of travel brought me to my destination. I look at the grey stone building through the chain link fence for a moment, wondering how close I'd need to get to it. A flutter of fear almost had me giving up on my suicidal plan, but the grim resolve soon took its place again. I walk the perimeter until I found a gap, squeezing through it with my pack in hand. I crouch, fishing through the contents until I found the old geiger counter I'd used as a caravan guard what seemed like a lifetime ago and switch it on. The needle jumps and settles at a steady, low background level with only the intermittent click. I place it back in my bag, shoulder it, and start walking towards the building.

By the time I reach the outside wall, the counter is ticking regularly, like the dripping from a leaky tap. Infrequent and irregular, but persistent. I find a fire exit and manage to pull open the peeling metal door, stooping ever so slightly to enter. The hall inside is huge, the dull sunlight of the early evening filtering through cracks and holes in the ceiling high above. The place is a mess of fallen metal beams, gantries, cranes, and other heaps of twisted rusting metal. But the berths are mostly unoccupied. Perhaps the engines had been moved to safety in the days before the Great War.

One locomotive still waits in its berth, however, far on the other side of the hall. In its time it would've been a magnificent streamlined machine, perfectly designed to fly along the rails, pulling passengers in luxury from West to East and back again. Now the paint has flaked, the metal thinned and crumbled to mineral, abandoned, forgotten. I walk closer to it, geiger counter clicking faster in new panic. I start to taste metal and itch all over, but I keep walking in grim determination. I round a heap of scrap metal and can see the great steel wheels of the engine, see the faint blue glow of ionised air behind them. My counter starts to scream, I feel my steps falter and weaken. I drop my pack and double over, dropping to all fours and violently vomiting a dark bloody bile. The pressure, the ache that's tormented me for weeks or months reaches a crescendo, I scream inaudibly and claw at the last remaining patches of human flesh that until now have clung to my body, tearing my tattered, ill-fitting clothed to ribbons. I crawl forward, reaching out and watching through tears as vicious, lethal claws tear my fingers apart from within. That horrible tortuous pressure in my head continues, a creaking of bone like a tree seconds before being felled. I manage only a few more feet before slipping, falling hard on my side against the rails, crying out. Something feels like it's trying to pull my spine out through the small of my back. I writhe and curl up, unable to ignore the feeling of my legs shifting and reshaping, clutching at my head with my hands, eyes screwed shut tight. The sound of the geiger counter, like hail on a metal roof, suddenly cuts out. This is it, I thought through the swirling red fog of agony, I'm going to die here....

....but I didn't

I don't know how long I lay on the floor of the roundhouse. I lost all sense of time. Eventually though, the pain started to subside. From agony to painful. From painful to uncomfortable. Finally, for the first time in a long time, from uncomfortable to nothing. It was that above anything else that made me open my eyes. I took a few moments more, lying on the sleepers, breathing heavy ragged breaths. But still breathing. Get up. Get up. Get up.

I somehow manage to shuffle into a kneeling position, head still swimming. Then, with a herculean effort, I get shakily to my feet.

I look down at myself, eyes wide. The patch of ground where I'd been lying looks like the worst back alley brahmin slaughterhouse you could find. Blood and torn scraps of flesh cause me to step backwards instinctively, uneasy on my feet. I look at them. I can scarcely believe they're mine. Curving, onyx coloured talons and crooked, animalistic legs with rough hide and hard dark scutes. If I didn't know better I'd say I was hallucinating.

I practice a little at walking and finding my new centre of balance. It's much further forward than I'm used to, but my long reptilian tail naturally balances me out. A few times I slip, even falling to one knee on occasion, but I get the hang of it quickly. The air no longer has that metallic taste to it, something I discover by instinctively flicking my tongue out like a snake, recoiling a little at the impulse. I manage to make my way over to my pack, gingerly trying to open it with claws clearly ill suited to anything requiring fine motor skills. The geiger counter sits on top of the contents, the display unlit, the glass hazy. It's well and truly dead. I decide to keep it for now, in case I can get it repaired. Picking up the bag, I gather myself, get my bearings, and head back to where I came in.

I soon discover that I'm now too big to fit through the door I came in by, and have to find another way out through the yard, eventually barging my way through the fence with my shoulder. Once again reaching the road, I sit down on the floor, dazed, stunned. What even was I now?

I look up at the sky, emblazoned with countless stars. For once the world is quiet. For once my mind is calm. Resignation or acceptance? That I'll have to work out in the weeks to come.

Once the second round of anguish passes, I get to my feet, looking at myself in the light of day. The ground seems impossibly far away with my feet still on the ground, such as they are with my raised heels. I look like the stuff of nightmares, still streaked with blood long since dried to copper brown. Even if I found a glass, would I want to see my reflection? Claws, teeth, talons, the very things that would chill my blood as a guard, are now mine. The sound of my pulse thumping in my ears is synchronised with my rapid breathing, drawing great lungfuls of air with rattling growls, a mechanical beat like a....

"HEY HEY HEY STAND CLEAR!"

Somewhere nearby there's a metallic *crack!* and the sound of rushing steam. The noise isn't far away, and I instinctively grab my pack and flee to the only cover available: the maze of abandoned rolling stock in the nearby shunting yard. Unfortunately, judging by the increased volume of the subsequent argument, that only brought me closer to the commotion.

I try to stay low, almost crawling as I peer around the corner of a box car. Some way aways, two figures shout at each other around a ranshackle locomotive. The driver barks instructions from the footplate as the fireman waves his hands and yells back, throwing a heavy metal toolbox down on the ground by the now steady stream of steam gushing from a breech in the piston.

"Fuck's sake Stan, you said you checked the engine before we left New Reno!" the driver spits at the fireman, who hollers back without looking up from his work patching the crack with a metal plate

"What do you expect from me, fortune telling? The hell was I supposed to forsee she'd blow like this! If I could see the future I'd dump your sorry ass in a siding and hit up Vegas"

"How long is it going to take? We're already late getting this shit west, we're going to get our pay docked"

"Oh and I'm a miracle worker too am I? Give me some space Jack whilst I get her patched up."

"Fine, I gotta take a piss anyway"

The driver, Jack, jumps down from the footplate and stalks off in the direction of the now distant roundhouse. Stan, the fireman, scowls over at the man, then shouts at his back

"You nuts?! Don't go that way, you want the rads to cook you from inside out?!"

"Like it'll make a blind bit of difference!" Jack hisses back, but takes a hard turn right and stomps in my direction instead. In a panic I realise he's heading my way, but boxed in by the cars as I am, I can only very slowly crawl backwards, trying to stay as quiet as possible. I move agonisingly slowly, wielding my limbs clumsily like a newborn animal. I've barely made ten feet when Jack rounds the corner, glaring at the floor and cramming a cigarette into his mouth.

He's a tall but gaunt man, clad in a shabby loose fitting boiler suit that's clearly several sizes too big, pulled tight at the waist by a belt of tools. He pushes back his peaked leather cap on his head and strikes a match, hands riddled with the radiation burns typical of the railworker. He glances up as he lights his cigarette, moving to tuck a battered tin on tobacco into the top pocket of his suit, then looks up again in stunned horror.

I watch the man turn paper white. From my perspective, he seems tiny, fragile, vulnerable. The cigarette drops from his open mouth, scattering embers as it hits his chest on the way to the floor, his eyes wide. From his point of view, a huge, bloodstained deathclaw, nightmare of the wastes, a creature capable of pulling him apart at the joints in an instant, looms over him.

My legs cramp and I wince. I try to say something as I stand up to stretch the complaining muscles. All that comes out is a deep, gutteral growl flecked with spittle.

He screams. He screams with a horror I've never heard before. The tin of tobacco is discarded as he whirls about on his heels and sprints pell mell away, directionless, powered only by the urge to flee and survive.

"STAN! RUN! FUCK, THERE'S A 'CLAW! RUN!!!"

From my new vantage point looking over the box car I see Stan turn and look at me. He can't scream, can't even make a noise, as he freezes for a few precious seconds before scrambling to his feet and running too, leaving a trail of tools in his wake. I watch them in flight, pounding the earth with their feet as fast as they can go, disappearing towards the nearby hills.

Then the quiet is back. I'm not sure what to do. I saunter over to the engine and the scattered jetsom of the two men. Crouching down, I pick through it inexpertly with my claws. I don't have any use for this stuff, the scavenger mentality is just a habit from my old life. I open a metal box and find it full of assorted dried and tinned food. I remember my experience with the Cram and wretch, pushing the stuff away.

I don't even get anything to eat...

I don't wait to see if the two men try to return. I stand up at full height and stretch, joints cracking unpleasantly. I take a mental note not to stoop for too long.

With a weary sigh I go and fetch my bag, pick a direction away from the yard and roundhouse, and start walking.