Fallout - Chapter 147: Seeds and Foundations (Patreon)

Nuka-World, Nuka-Town USA Market.

Mackenzie Bridgeman, dressed in a white lab coat, knelt beside a makeshift examination bed. The lab coat had been washed until it was gray; the cuffs and front were stained with blood and medicine that wouldn’t come out, and there was a tear along the shoulder seam, hastily patched with coarse thread.

She didn’t care about any of that. In the Wasteland, what a doctor wore didn’t matter. What mattered was whether their hands were steady and whether they had enough medicine.

Lying on the bed was a girl, about fifteen or sixteen years old, her feet completely wrapped in bandages.

Her feet were barely recognizable below the ankles, the Pack had dragged her into the arena and crushed her tarsal and metatarsal bones inch by inch with the heels of their iron boots. Then they shoved her together with another slave, betting on who could still stand and wield a weapon after their ankles had been shattered.

They bet bottle caps, ammunition, even their own female slaves, as they gathered outside the iron cage, drinking and shouting.

The girl won. She didn’t know how she’d won. All she remembered was lying face-down in the mud, crawling on her elbows, and biting her opponent’s wrist with her teeth until she passed out.

The winning Raiders laughed, dumped their winnings, caps, into a tin bucket with a clinking sound, then dragged her back into the cage, tossed her there, and no one paid her any mind.

Until Mackenzie found her.

Mackenzie was now unwrapping the old bandage, moving so gently and slowly, as if she were opening a fragile, old letter.

She peeled away the dressings layer by layer and examined the wound. It was a little better than yesterday. The swelling had gone down slightly, the ulcerated edges had stopped spreading, and there was no sign of the infection moving farther up her calf.

Mackenzie rinsed the wound with clean water, then applied a freshly mixed ointment and rewrapped the bandage.

“You’ll be all right.”

The girl didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the tent ceiling, her pupils dilated and vacant, like two dry wells.

Mackenzie stood up and packed away her medical kit.

Her cheeks were somewhat gaunt; from years of traveling through the Wasteland to practice medicine, her skin bore a dull, pale grayish-yellow hue from constant sun exposure, with fine dust and faint sunspots scattered across her cheeks and forehead.

There were distinct dark circles under her eyes, the result of sleepless nights, her eyelids were slightly swollen, and her sclera was streaked with faint red blood vessels.

She looked haggard, like a string that had been stretched too tight for too long, visibly on the verge of snapping.

But she couldn’t stop.

Most of the rescued slaves bore injuries and illnesses. Whip marks, broken bones, infections, malnutrition, and those invisible wounds, the ones hidden deep in their eyes.

From dawn till dusk, and from dusk till dawn, she tended to wounds, applied splints, distributed medication, and provided psychological counseling, one patient after another.

Every patient’s condition reminded her just how limited her own strength was.

But she couldn’t stop.

Mackenzie pulled back the tent flap, and Nuka-Town USA’s midday sunlight slammed down on her. She squinted, let her eyes adjust, and prepared to head to the next tent to see another patient.

Two Minutemen stood quietly outside, waiting for her.

They wore neat, dark uniforms and stood ramrod straight, unlike the slouching, disheveled Raiders. Their gear hung neatly from their belts, and their rifles were slung diagonally across their backs, muzzles pointing downward.

When she emerged, one of them gave a slight bow, his movement restrained and polite.

“Ms. Mackenzie, our general would like to see you.”

Mackenzie froze for a moment.

Her first instinct was to look down at her white coat. There were bloodstains on the cuffs and medicine stains on the front. Her hair, unwashed for so long, was greasy and plastered to her temples. Was she supposed to go see the General of the Minutemen looking like this?

But the soldier didn’t give her time to tidy herself up; he simply stepped aside and gestured for her to follow.

She nodded, handed her medical kit to her assistant, a frail boy of sixteen or seventeen, once a slave himself, who was now learning first aid by her side, and then followed the two soldiers out.

From the market in Nuka-Town USA to the summit of Fizztop Mountain, everything along the way was changing.

Every trace left by the Raiders was being erased. The menacing gang graffiti on the walls, covered layer by layer with white paint, as if pieces of festering skin were being covered with gauze.

The trophies hanging from the streetlight poles, those violent ornaments cobbled together from human bones and scrap metal, were taken down and piled by the roadside, awaiting mass destruction. The iron cages once used to imprison slaves were being dismantled; the bars were thrown into furnaces, heated red-hot, hammered, and reforged into steel for construction.

The inner walls of those cages still bore the deep scratches left by the slaves’ fingernails, row upon row, densely packed, now melting into molten iron in the furnace and flowing into new molds.

The sound of hammers striking metal echoed from all directions. Scaffolding climbed section by section up the exterior walls of the building; workers labored high above, and sparks from electric welding flickered in the midday sun, their blue-white arcs resembling miniature flashes of lightning.

Some workers were laying new water pipes.

Others were clearing the rubble, loading rubble and debris into wheelbarrows, pushing them down the street to dump into designated pits for burial, their wheels creaking on the gravel road.

The air was thick with the smell of dust, sweat, and freshly turned soil.

This was no longer the Nuka-Town USA filled with screams and blood.

Mackenzie paused as she walked past a house under reconstruction. She recognized several familiar faces, slaves she’d treated in her clinic just a few days earlier, some with broken ribs, others with festering whip wounds, who were now clumsily learning to lay bricks.

Dressed in gray work clothes and wearing rough canvas gloves, they used trowels to smear mortar into the brick joints. Their movements were unpracticed; every now and then, they’d place a brick crookedly, only to knock it down and reposition it.

But their faces bore something long-missed, almost unfamiliar, hope.

That expression made Mackenzie choke up; she turned her face away and kept walking.

Then she saw the pond on the south side of Fizztop Mountain.

The corpses of Raiders hung densely all around the pond. The water glowed with a dark red foam, and a thin film of grease mixed with decaying matter floated on the surface.

Mackenzie looked away, forcing herself to tear her attention away from the corpses. She lowered her head, quickened her pace, and followed the soldiers onward.

Fizztop Mountain had been converted into the Minutemen’s command center and camp.

This amusement park ride, once the highest point in Nuka-World, home to the mountaintop barbecue restaurant where Colter had lived, had been completely transformed.

All the Raider flags had been torn down and piled on the ground, waiting to be burned as firewood. The Minutemen’s flags hung from the four corners of the terrace and the railings; the deep blue fabric, adorned with a star pattern, fluttered in the wind, and the material felt slightly warm from the sun.

At the foot of the mountain, rows of tents and prefab housing units were set up; soldiers marched in and out in formation, and shouts of “Count the supplies!” drifted from the direction of the warehouse. Antennas for communication equipment had been erected on the mountaintop, their tips glowing with faint red indicator lights.

The elevator ascended.

Mackenzie leaned against the cold elevator wall, her forehead pressed against the glass, watching Nuka-Town USA shrink into a chessboard-like pattern below her feet. Her heart was beating a little fast.

Why had the General summoned her? She didn’t know.

But she knew one thing, a summons from the seat of power was rarely a good sign.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened.

Sunlight flooded in, making her face feel slightly warm.

The terrace was piled high with Razorgrain seeds, dark golden kernels spread out on a massive canvas, covering an entire corner and glinting with a cold, metallic sheen in the afternoon sun.

That was the distinctive texture of Razorgrain husks, hard and sharp. The pile of seeds resembled a small sand dune, its center disturbed, bearing the imprints of palms and knees.

Two people were crouched beside the canvas, dressed in drab gray clothes, heads bowed as they sorted through the seeds. They looked like two perfectly ordinary farmers, selecting seeds and preparing for the next planting season after the fall harvest.

One of them was Preston. Mackenzie recognized him as the Minutemen general’s adjutant. He crouched on the left side of the seed pile, slowly sifting through the dark golden kernels and tossing them into two buckets, one for the plump seeds and one for the shriveled ones. His movements were unhurried but extremely methodical.

The other was the General of the Minutemen.

Jace sat cross-legged at the edge of the canvas on a low wooden crate. He wore dusty work pants and an equally dusty cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms, while his fingers sifted through the pile of seeds.

His knuckles were thick, dirt was embedded beneath his fingernails, and several old scars crossed the backs of his hands.

(Note: Razorgrain is a radiation-mutated variety of pre-War wheat that emerged after the Great War; it is one of the most common crops in the post-war era. It thrives in high temperatures, with an optimal growth range of 22–30 degrees Celsius, and is suitable for cultivation at altitudes below 1,000 meters. It is a drought-tolerant, high-yielding crop.

This crop is grown throughout the Commonwealth. Although yields have declined slightly since the post-war mutation, large-scale cultivation still produces enough to feed a significant number of people.

The grain itself can be ground with a stone mill for human consumption, and the stems and leaves can be used as livestock feed. Some wasteland communities use Razorgrain to make decent porridge, though it is usually quite expensive.

However, it also has drawbacks:

First, the seeds cannot be sorted by soaking them in brine.

Razorgrain is a radiation-mutated, hard wheat variety. Its seed husks are thick and dense, and its endosperm is plump and compact, resulting in an overall density far higher than that of ordinary wheat. Even underdeveloped or radiation-mutated grains rarely have hollow cavities inside. When dropped into a saltwater pool, the vast majority of seeds will sink straight to the bottom;

Second, as the name implies:

The awns of ordinary wheat are already prickly enough, but those of Razorgrain are truly as sharp as blades. Farmers must wear thick leather gloves when harvesting; one careless move can result in a deep, bloody gash.

Wild Razorgrain is even more extreme. It is nearly impossible to harvest by hand, which drives up the price of the sleep-inducing and anti-fatigue herbal remedies made from it.)

Mackenzie felt briefly dazed.

She had imagined countless versions of what a General might look like.

Tall and imposing, radiating a murderous aura, like a predator ready to pounce on its prey at any moment. Or cold and brooding, never smiling, maintaining authority through violence and terror like the small warlords who ruled the Wasteland.

She’d also imagined the kind of bombastic orator who stood on a platform, pumping his fist and shouting slogans to the crowd, stirring up the masses with his words.

But she had never imagined someone like this: a man crouched on the ground sorting seeds like an ordinary farmer.

There were no guards beside him, no ceremonial escort, no luxurious throne or rare weapon symbolizing power. He simply sat cross-legged beside the canvas, basking in the sun with chaff clinging to his hands, like an ordinary old farmer whose back ached from a long day in the fields.

Hearing the elevator doors open, Jace looked up.

His gaze first fell on Mackenzie, sweeping over her from head to toe, as if to assess her condition, vitality, and state of mind.

Then his gaze lingered for a second on the dark circles under her eyes, and he furrowed his brow slightly.

“You’re here?” he greeted her, his voice flat and his tone casual, as if greeting an old acquaintance he’d known for a long time.

“Come help sort the seeds. We need to finish before dark.”

He simply tilted his chin, pointing toward the pile of dark golden seeds on the canvas, then lowered his head again to continue his work.

Mackenzie froze for half a second.

Then she walked over, crouched down by the edge of the tarp, and tucked the hem of her white lab coat beneath her knees. She glanced at the pile of seeds, then watched Jace and Preston’s movements and how they were sorting them into buckets, and immediately understood the classification criteria.

She’d grown Razorgrain before, back in her settlement, on that plot of land near the riverbank, where she’d led the settlers in cultivating several acres of farmland, trading the harvest with passing caravans for medicine and tools.

The three of them crouched there on the terrace as sunlight slanted down from above, stretching their shadows into three short, thick, dark blobs.

No one spoke. Only the clatter of Nuka-Town USA’s reconstruction in the distance mingled together, the clang of hammers, the “heh-heh” of workers’ chants, the hiss of electric welding, and the whoosh of wind sweeping over the mountaintops.

Two hours later, they had finished sorting through the pile of seeds.

Jace straightened up and stretched his stiff neck and shoulder blades. He tossed the last good seed into the burlap sack and brushed the chaff from his hands. Then he looked up at Mackenzie.

In that very instant, his gaze changed.

A moment ago, he had looked like an old farmer absorbed in his work, his eyes holding a gentle warmth as if warmed by the sun. Now, however, those eyes were like a drawn blade, his gaze narrowed, focused, and sharpened, piercing straight into Mackenzie’s pupils.

“I’ve heard that you once provided life-saving medical treatment to Raiders who attacked your settlement and to slave-hunting squads from Nuka-World.”

Mackenzie’s hand froze.

She had been about to stand up, but upon hearing this, she paused. She remained in a half-crouch, her fingers still dusted with chaff from shelling the seeds. She lifted her head to meet that piercing gaze, without flinching.

“I admit it,” she said. Her voice was neither high nor low, and it didn’t tremble.

“I took the Hippocratic Oath. Saving lives comes first, no matter who the person is. That’s the rule I set for myself. It has nothing to do with who rules Nuka-World.”

“Very well.”

Jace’s gaze did not waver; he continued to stare at her.

“Having principles and sticking to them is a good thing. Then let me ask you one more question, suppose Colter hadn’t been killed by me in the arena, but had found you instead, begging you to treat his wounds and give him a chance to make a comeback. What would you do?”

The room fell instantly silent.

Preston’s hand hovered over the pile of seeds, clutching a single grain, his knuckles turning slightly white. The two soldiers who had brought Mackenzie up stood by the elevator, their bodies slightly tense.

Sunlight streamed through a crack in the protective shield atop Fizztop Mountain, falling diagonally onto the pile of dark-gold seeds and into the frozen silence between the three of them.

A breeze blew in from outside the terrace, lifting and lowering the corners of the canvas with a rustling sound.

Mackenzie didn’t answer right away.

She remained silent for a moment, her eyes cast down at the bits of chaff on the canvas. A flurry of images flashed through her mind, Colter’s cold smile as he sat on the high platform overlooking the arena, his arrogance as he kicked away a slave kneeling on the ground. Those images made her fingers curl slightly.

Then she spoke. Her voice was calm, so calm that even she was a little surprised.

“I’ll still save him. He’ll be safe in my clinic.”

She paused. She looked at Jace.

“But the moment he steps out of the clinic, it’s a different story.”

As she said those last words, her tone didn’t change, but something flashed in her eyes. It was cold, a deep, bone-chilling, unflinching cold.

Jace looked into her eyes, as if trying to confirm whether what she’d said was true.

Then he asked his second question.

“Why don’t you get some rest? We have enough doctors; you don’t need to pull several all-nighters in a row. You have dark circles under your eyes, your pupils are reacting sluggishly, and your fingertips are trembling slightly. If you keep this up, you’ll collapse right on the street.”

The corner of Mackenzie’s mouth twitched slightly.

She looked down at her fingers. They were indeed trembling slightly, the uncontrollable tremor of muscles pushed past exhaustion.

“You’re good people. You’ve helped us so much. You liberated this hellhole, killed Colter, broke up those gangs, and gave us food and medicine.”

She took a deep breath.

“But we can’t just dump all our troubles on you and wait for the problems to solve themselves.”

“No one in this Wasteland should be expected to shoulder someone else’s suffering as a matter of course. Caring for the wounded, repairing the fences. We should carry most of that burden ourselves. By staying here and working nonstop, I can at least take some of the pressure off so your people aren’t run ragged because of us. You saved our lives, so we should get back on our feet and walk on our own. We can’t stay on your backs forever.”

As she spoke, she kept her back straight, not slouching despite her exhaustion.

Jace’s gaze softened, the lines at the corners of his eyes grew slightly shallower, the sharpness in his pupils receded a bit, and the tension in his jaw eased slightly. The change was so subtle that if Mackenzie hadn’t been watching his eyes the whole time, she wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

“One last question. What did you do before you became a slave?”

“I used to manage a settlement west of Nuka-Town USA.”

“When Colter attacked us, I stepped in to negotiate a ceasefire. The price was that I had to treat the wounded on both sides, including him. Later, after he secured his hold on Nuka-Town USA, he came back with a deal: work for him, and he’d spare my settlement. I agreed. So I put on the collar and worked as a doctor in the market.”

“Were you ever mayor?”

“No.”

Jace held out his hand.

His palm was open, facing upward. Crumbs of grain husks and dirt were lodged beneath his fingernails. But his hand was steady, without the slightest tremor.

“How about giving it a try?”

Mackenzie looked at that hand.

She thought of her own settlement, the fields burned by Colter, where the irrigation channels she and her neighbors had dug together still remained along the ridges.

She recalled the moment she put on the explosive collar, the cold sensation as the metal snapped shut, pressing against her carotid artery like a coiled snake.

She thought of the slaves at the clinic these past few days, their bodies mangled beyond recognition, their vacant stares, shattered bones, and festering wounds.

Then she reached out and took Jace’s hand.

The rough pads of his fingers pressed against the palm of her hand. For a split second, she was dazed, the last time she’d reached out like this to catch something was when Colter handed her the collar.

But this time, the warmth in his palm was different. This time, that hand didn’t let go.

“I think I can do it.”

Her voice was slightly hoarse, but steady.

Jace clasped her hand, squeezing gently.

“Welcome to the Minutemen.”

The tension on the terrace eased.

Preston lowered his head and continued inspecting the remaining pile of seeds, picking out the few bad ones that Mackenzie had missed and tossing them into the waste bin. The two soldiers standing by the elevator also relaxed their shoulders; one of them turned and stepped into the elevator, preparing to go down to deliver the order.

Mackenzie stood where she was, not moving. She looked at Jace, her lips moving slightly.

“I’ll be a good mayor.”

Jace nodded.

“I know.”

“Now, go get some sleep. You’re not allowed to go back to the clinic, that’s an order.”

A genuine smile finally appeared at the corners of Mackenzie’s mouth.

“Yes, General.”

She turned toward the elevator. After taking two steps, she stopped and glanced back, Jace had already walked back to the canvas and was crouching down again. Preston was beside him, also looking down as he sorted through the seeds.

Mackenzie turned and stepped into the elevator. Before the doors closed, she took one last look at the scene.

The two of them were crouched there in the sunlight on the terrace, like two ordinary farmers going about their work.

Ding. The elevator doors closed.

Mackenzie leaned against the elevator wall and closed her eyes. The cold metal pressed against her back and the back of her head, and she felt every bone in her body emitting a faint groan, exhaustion washed over her like a tide.

Her eyelids felt too heavy to lift, and her breathing slowed.

But at the corners of her mouth, that smile remained.

The elevator moved downward, the indicator lights ticking down one by one. She knew that when she woke up, there would be more work waiting for her, more wounded people to treat, more seeds to sort, and more rubble to clear and rebuild.

But she wasn’t afraid.

Because she knew she wasn’t alone.

...

On the terrace,

Jace was crouched beside the canvas. Preston stood beside him, and the two continued sorting through the few remaining seeds.

“General.”

Preston spoke, his voice very low.

“Are you really going to make her mayor of Nuka-Town USA?”

“Yes.”

Jace picked up a grain, inspected it, and set it back down.

“The Minutemen in Nuka-World need a local to help with management. She understands the situation here and knows what’s needed.”

Preston nodded.

“By the way, those Raider bodies…”

“Leave them.”

Jace’s tone was flat, but his voice didn’t rise at the end, there was no room for discussion.

“Leave them hanging for at least another week.”

“Let everyone see them. Let every resident of Nuka-World, every traveler passing through here, and every remnant of the Raiders still hiding in the shadows see them with their own eyes. Let them understand this:”

“Either join us, rebuild our homes, farm the land, build houses, and live our lives.”

“Or keep trying to be a slave owner, a thug, a beast that lives off other people’s flesh and blood, and end up hanging by the pond.”

“General.”

After a long silence, Preston spoke.

“You didn’t choose Mackenzie as mayor just because she used to manage the settlement, did you?”

Jace looked up at the opposite bank of the pond, where a newly cultivated field lay.

Some of the Nuka-World residents who were still in decent physical shape were turning the soil; the muffled thud of shovels cutting into the earth could be faintly heard across the pond. The ridges had just been re-shaped, and the outlines of irrigation channels had been dug out.

The sunlight fell on their backs, and sweat left dark, damp stains on their grimy clothes.

“She’s been through the worst.”

Jace’s gaze fell on the field, his eyes drifting slightly into the distance.

“She was attacked, forced to wear a collar, and made a slave. And she had to treat, with her own hands, the very people who destroyed everything she had. She knows how cruel the Wasteland is, and how dark human nature can become.”

He paused.

“But she didn’t break. She didn’t become a Raider or lose her mind. She held on to her principles. She kept caring for other people and kept believing in something.”

Preston nodded.

“Someone like that…”

“Only someone like that can build a city in the Wasteland,” Jace said, his voice deep and measured.

“Because she knows what a city should be, what people should be like, and what has to be held on to even in the darkest times. Someone like that may not be the strongest fighter or the smartest person, but she’s the kind of person…”

He paused, his gaze resting on the freshly plowed field in the distance.

“She’s the kind of person who serves as a foundation.”

Preston was silent for a moment.

“Sounds just like you, General.”

Jace didn’t respond.

He simply turned his gaze away, crouched down again by the edge of the canvas, and reached out to grab the last handful of seeds. Fragments of chaff clung to his fingertips, shimmering with flecks of gold in the afternoon sunlight.

“Just one handful left. Once we’re done sorting, we’ll call it a day.”

The two men continued sorting the Razorgrain seeds in the slanting afternoon sunlight, keeping the plump ones and discarding the shriveled ones.

Their movements were slow but extremely meticulous, like two ordinary farmers making the most basic, unassuming preparations for a year’s harvest.

The sunlight was lovely. Looking down from the summit of Fizztop Mountain, the entire Nuka-Town USA was bathed in a warm, golden glow. The newly built rooftops glinted faintly, the freshly turned soil appeared deep brown, and figures moved back and forth among the makeshift tents and work sheds.

The wind blew in from the south, coming from the direction of the pond, carrying a hint of rot as well as the dry, slightly sweet, grainy scent characteristic of Razorgrain seeds.

Jace placed the last plump seed into the burlap sack, tied the opening tightly, and clapped his hands.

His hands were steady; every seed had been carefully selected.

One day in the future, each seed would sprout, grow, tiller, head out, and bear new fruit.

Generation after generation.

Year after year.