“Travis Lonely Miles, and this is the great green jewel... Diamond City Radio. It’s the lunch hour, I’ll be taking a short break and letting the music roll for a while. Here’s The Shells with Baby Oh Baby...The Dubs With Could this Be Love...and Earth Angel by The Penguins. Alright, I don’t know much about the rest of the people in the wasteland, but I’m hungry. Donde est la comida? Eh?”

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Crossing a wooden plank bridge with two steel barriers on each side over the river that broke and went around Sanctuary Hills, creating a moat. He turned over his shoulder and saw the corner of the billboard above vault 111 advertising registry.

There were two dead bodies on the road, one only the legs remained, and a portion of the left lane crossing the bridge into Concord was missing. Black scorch marks and a body off the bridge surrounded by two dead dogs. One was impaled through the stomach with a tire iron. A bloody trail leading away from the leg showed a creature dragged the leg away and chewed on the gristle and bones. The man was badly mauled, maimed, face muscles ripped away from the cheek, nose, mouth, and lower neck. The dogs legs and skulls were broken by a bloody and broken tree branch thrown a short distance away. Two thick green fragmentation grenades were attached to his belt, Nate pulled it off him and put them on himself.

The dogs were scarred and burnt from he tip to their snout, to their tails. Like someone pressed white hot iron to every square inch of their bodies. Fur scorched away and jaws elongated for devouring and tearing through tough meat.

Two hundred nine years nine months of radiation. The plants, animals, and humans carried on somehow. Even if it wasn't what he thought dogs should looks like, they needed to survive through endurance, strength, larger jaws, longer teeth, looser shoulder blades and more tendon, and luck. The lucky ones survived through necessity.

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His ears rung from the silence and blood rushing through them. Boots crunching any loose gravel on the faded sun bleached blacktop. Meathead growled and hung his head low, trotting forward and leaning side to side with every step. The faded orange and red fueling station hung long pour spouts from the roof overhang. A square building with a garage on the north side, and a storefront on the east. The overhang covered two rows and two cars one red and yellow, a large skeleton collapsed by the right passenger door, two more skeletons in the backseat of the first.
A pollen coated and peeling rocket twenty feet tall was on the roof, and trees grew out of vending machines on the ground below.

The Red Rocket fueling station was a former relic of itself, on the inside was the station attendant, collapsed over his knees and arms wrapped around him. The jumpsuit he wore was sky blue and red with dual RR, above the right breast pocket. The first R was flipped backwards with a thin red rocket running up between the two.

Meathead barked twice as rat creature half the size of the dog ran in from the back office of the fueling station door and jumped. It bit down onto Meathead, he barked and flung the mole rat away as a second and third rat came from the garage. Meathead snarled and pinned the mole to the ground, biting down on to the front right leg, pulling and tearing he head upwards. He bit down again into the shoulder, snapping his head back, shaking his head back and forth. Iron and wet palpable blood coursed through his teeth, lunging at the shrieking mouth, his forward molars sink into the jawbone of the rat, cracking.

Ripping, Tearing, bone, blood and muscle were flung away to the left as the profusely bleeding mole rat thrashed in its painful death throw. Clamping down onto the neck, Meathead clenched through the bones and blood and moving muscle in his teeth until the neck joint snapped from force.

Nate's heart pounded, time slowing to a crawl as he raised his ten millimeter handgun and counted the odds of hitting the ugly little bastards right in their little heads. He gave it a 95% chance.

The bullets clanged out three times, one bullet drilling a hole straight through the mole rat's skull and two bloody gashes made the second mole rat fall over dead.

Patches of broken pavement shifted, getting flicked upwards into the air. Like a air pocket reaching the surface, three more mole rats dug their way up, he fired five times, Meathead tackled one hurt one, diving at their legs and snapping one joint from the impact alone. Scooping up the rat in his jaws, he shook and tore the creature back and forth trying to break its neck bones.

With the bat in his right hand, he swung down, smashing the mole rats as they jumped and dove at him. Cracking one in the side of the body, it landed a few feet away, breathing but unmoving. Meathead went to it, grabbing the molerat in his jaws, picking it up into the air, and then slamming the rat back down, using its body weight to end its life.

The garage shop was stocked with an empty yellow frame of steel and chains waiting for a suit of power armor to hang up, or alternatively, hoist an engine block out of a car. A workbench covered with a mess of tools and the ceiling was coated in a fine layer of spiderwebs around every corner of the garage.

Their bodies were easier to see than their legs, the storefront was picked over, but there was also plenty to scavenge. Car parts, bolts, oil, power steering fluid, screwdrivers, Nate picked up a tipped over magazine rack and pushed it against the counter and stepped over the rubble and dirt on the floor. Glass shards crunched against the linoleum floors, Nate held his pistol ready, moving into the back office, a small desk with a blinking monitor and a bedroll was laid out on the floor. On the wall was Benjamin Franklin’s Join or Die what was considered eight state sections of the original thirteen American colonies of a much larger snake.

And there Nate stood, lowering his pistol to gaze at the poster.
NE
NY
NJ
P
M
V
NC
NS

Lingering on the M, he snorted, sniffing his nose to clear his nostrils.
Meathead approached his side, quietly looking at whatever his master was looking at.

“Once up a time it meant to untie people against the Natives, then it was for the colonies to fight the British...Meathead.

Imagine if some outfitted ship came sailing up the river, looking at us now. They’d sa’, what the fuck, uncultured heathens. Killing each other like some animals throwing nukes around like that.”

“Columbus said 'Look at how peaceful they are...it'll be easy to enslave them.” Nate said, looking directly at Meathead taking a short double barreled shotgun sitting upright in the chair.

Going outside, he walked a complete loop around the building, passing the picnic area, dumpsters, and the rims of a tire turned into a cooking spot by someone decades ago and left to rust and gathering algae and water. Back inside the garage, Meathead came bounding around the corner after him, Nate scratched his ears and set his left hand on the workbench, Wiping away the centimeter of dust gathered on the red paint, he blew the rest on top away. He took off his Pip Boy for a moment, and set the shotgun on the bench, wiping out the barrel and loading two fresh shells into the gun and wrapped the stock in ducktape, tying a sling from the tip of he barrel to the hilt, he pulled it over his shoulder and shortened the strap so it didn’t bang against his side with every step. In the garage, mounted over the garage door with only six inches of clearance between the door and the ceiling was a painted wooden plank reading 'Have a Grateful Day'.

Carrying two three gallon containers of Mr. Handy fuel to the curb, he set them at out for his return trip later. Letting the metal canisters rest on the ground, he whistled for Meathead and took a right out of the parking lot, passing the rusted out, overgrown sign advertising fuel prices, and a billboard selling Nuka-Cola with Nuka-Cola's last advertising run, Nuka-Girl holding up a crisp, fizzy soda-pop, with a Nuke-Blaster squirt gun in the other.

He found several bottles of Nuka-Cola while doing through the Red Rocket filling station and looked at the grimey bottle. Unlike fine wines stored on their side to keep the cork wet, newer bottle caps had a bit of plastic on the bottom, so when they're punched out and fitted onto the soda bottle, an airtight seal is formed.

All the sugars started to coalesce and sit on the bottom of the drink. Holding it upside down until the sediment reached the bottle cap, then flipping it right side up, Nate watched as everything inside the bottle was reincorporated. Licking his lips, he felt all the dry bumps on his tongue. Salivating, he held one bottle to the counter, and pried the bottlecap off the top using downward force. The cap flew into the air and clattered against the ground.

There was a small fizz, he tasted it, shivering at the experience. It tasted like room temperature sugar water with vanilla and oak wood chips. He stuck his tongue out and gagged once. Shivering as the liquid wormed its way down into his stomach, he spat to try and get the taste out of his mouth.

It tasted okay, more or less, Nate thought. His mind couldn't get past the idea that it was centuries old.

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