Fate Bringer, Part Two

By Dooms Shadow

 

The merciless scorching sun beat down on John as he struggled through the desert. He had removed one of the armor plates on his back and placed it on his injured right foot. The makeshift splint allowed him to hobble without receiving too much pain. The oh too familiar smell of Brahmin’s dung wafted into his nose.

“A caravan!” Thought John the ex-police officer as a fresh jolt of pain shot up his leg when he tried to run towards the foul smell.

As John neared the caravan he heard a harsh voice shouting and a weak voice trying to respond. Quickly John half walked half crawled towards a nearby rock to listen.

“Give me the goods before I learn more about human anatomy when I blow open your gut!”

“No I c-c-can’t ju-ust g-g-give you it all-l-l…”

The weak voiced man’s sentence was cut short by the deafening blast of a shotgun. It seamed that the harsh voiced man was going to be taking his med.-school class soon. The thought of what had just happened shocked John he had never been into the wasteland and so knew little of the kind of law that was enforced in the desert. Johns thoughts where interrupted by the voice of a third man. By the tone in the man’s voice he seemed to be with the harsh voiced man.

“So what do we do now boss?” said the new voice in a clueless sort of way.

“We leave this caravan there is nothing we really need from this scum bag anyway.” The harsh voice responded. A small thud could be heard as one of the men kicked the caravan master as the duo left.

Peering over the rock john saw a scene that pleased and depressed him at the same time. He was glad to see that the raiders had left and that the caravan had been transporting a large amount of guns. The thing that depressed him was the stench of rotting flesh and the mangled corpses of the caravan guards. Limping towards the remains of the caravan John saw a sight that pleased him more than anything could and would again water.

After searching the corpses of the guards he was equipped with a beat up combat knife, a sawed off shotgun, 4 canteens of water, and his new best friend a 14mm pistol. He also found the appropriate ammo and stuffed it in his backpack. At last he came to searching the caravan master himself. John found a small sack full of the mutated fruit common to the wastes, which he emptied excitedly into his backpack. Among the more useless items found on the lifeless body was 3 stimpacks, which soon fell on top of the fruit in the backpack.

His morale boosted by his luck John started to leave the area when he came upon a site that was only a little smaller in importance to his sacred water, a map. He scanned the map to find the location of a nearby city. Never very good with maps it took John a while to figure out that there was a settlement to the south that was close enough that he might stand a chance of getting there. According to his map the settlement was named the boneyard.

Instilled with fresh hope and determination John adjusted his splint and began to hobble in the direction of this beacon of hope. After several days of traveling and living off of half dead half-radiated fruit John came across a small band of raiders. Acting on his previous experience John dived to get out of their way and behind a nearby bush. It seemed that fate had decided to turn the tables on John for when he jumped his unstable splint broke under the stress of all of the fatigue that it had endured through the long walk to the boneyard.

The shattering splint made such a loud noise that the raiders quickly turned in the direction of the sound. The four raiders walked over to the site of the broken splint without muttering a single word. John quickly analyzed the situation. Two where unarmed one was carrying a hunting rifle and the last seemed to be holding a submachine gun. Loading his shotgun and removing the safety on his 14mm,John jumped up the adrenaline replacing all of his blood.

The raider wielding the hunting rifle received a lobotomy with help from a 14mm round his brains splattering a nearby rock in an explosion that would put mount St. Helen to shame.

The next body to drop was the submachine gun wielding raider who fell to the blast of two 12ga. Shotgun rounds impacting his side simultaneously, spreading a fine mist of blood over the bleached sands.

The two remaining raiders rushed towards john fists raised. They both went to early grave at the hands of 14mm bullets that ripped apart their innards like they where put in a blender. The blood that escaped their limp bodies was quickly saturating the burning sands.

John promptly vomited over the body of one of the raiders; the blood being so unpleasant, John reloaded his weapons and replaced his splint with another back plate.

With this done he again hobbled towards the boneyard unaware that he had sealed the fate of the followers of the apocalypse. The “raiders” he had just killed where scouts for an army of regulators that would have stopped the mutants from invading the boneyard. Due to John’s trigger-happy personality the army of regulators became mislead and the path for the mutants was laid clear. It seems that John had yet again unintentionally killed thousands.
 

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