Fallout - Chapter 149: The Fleeing Prey and the Leisurely Hunter (Patreon)

In the Nuclear Wasteland, a radiation storm rages.

A yellow-green mist of radioactive dust sweeps in from the direction of the Commonwealth; the low-hanging clouds resemble a rotting shroud, blurring the line between sky and earth into a murky haze.

The wind carried fine radioactive particles that felt like sandpaper against exposed skin; with every breath, he tasted a bitter, metallic-tar flavor.

A man was sprinting northward through this yellow-green hell.

The dosimeter on his wrist was useless in this area, the numbers were jumping faster than his heartbeat, making it pointless to even look at it.

The man simply yanked the watch off his wrist and shoved it into his pocket; he focused only on the direction he was heading.

His face was covered in beast-like markings, black pigment made from charcoal ash and animal blood traced three parallel claw marks across his forehead, cheekbones, and chin, the mark of the Pack beastmaster. Each claw mark represented a successful taming, from Super Mutant hounds to a half-grown Yao Guai. The Gray Claw’s face once bore thirteen claw marks; now only these last three remained visible to others, while the rest had been slashed out by his own knife.

With every slash, he reminded himself: Past glory means nothing; only survival matters.

The man wore a plush costume stripped from a Nuka-World mascot; the garish synthetic fur was caked with radioactive dust and dried bloodstains. The outfit had originally been used by Nuka-World to entertain tourists, but the comical cartoon smile was now torn open in several places, revealing the patched-up steel lining beneath.

The antlered helmet on his head kept snagging on low-hanging dead branches and piles of rubble as he ran; every time it caught, he’d yank it free. The helmet’s strap had already dug deeply into his chin, like a thin noose.

His name was Gray Claw, the last animal trainer of the Pack.

On his back, he carried a leather backpack stuffed with soft grass and scraps of cloth stolen from the Safari Adventure zone, with three Gatorclaw eggs, each the size of a football, wrapped in the center. The eggshells were still coated with a layer of wet mud he’d brought back from the nest.

While he was running, the backpack bumped against his back with every stride, and with each impact, he instinctively flinched, not from pain, but from fear. Fear that the eggshells might shatter. He had little left to lose, but these three eggs were all he had left.

He wasn’t in Nuka-Town USA when the Pack’s headquarters was raided.

That day, he was in the wilderness west of Nuka-World, tracking the trail of a squad of Gunners with three hounds. The Gunners, those mercenaries clad in combat armor who fancied themselves a regular army, had set up several outposts across Nuka-World, attempting to infiltrate Nuka-World’s territory.

Gray Claw’s mission was to track them down, then return with the intelligence so Mason could bring men to crush them.

He lay in wait in the wilderness for three days. The hounds took turns standing guard at night, while he huddled under a blanket in a collapsed culvert, falling asleep to the howls of Deathclaws and Yao Guai echoing across the wasteland.

Early on the fourth morning, he finally pinpointed the Gunners’ camp, a high-level overpass where at least thirty fully armed Gunners and one Assaultron were stationed.

He immediately led his hounds back to summon reinforcements.

But it was already too late; from a distance, he saw flames rising in the direction of Nuka-Town USA.

The flames were blue, interspersed with blinding white flashes of lightning, the kind of light produced only when an armory is blown up.

He stood frozen in place for a long time, his hounds whimpering restlessly at his feet, their tails tucked between their legs.

The Alpha of the Pack, Mason, was dead. The man who had killed a full-grown Yao Guai in the arena, the leader who had earned his position as Alpha by defeating every challenger in one-on-one combat, was he really dead?

According to those who had escaped, the General had crushed Mason to death with just one hand.

When Gray Claw heard this, his first reaction was disbelief. How could Mason possibly have been crushed to death with bare hands?

Gray Claw had been sitting in the stands of the arena when Mason shattered the Yao Guai’s cervical vertebrae with his power fist; the roar of the more than three hundred spectators who had risen to their feet had left his ears ringing for two days.

That kind of strength, that kind of beast, killed by a man with his bare hands?

But it had indeed happened.

Leaderless, the Pack was crushed head-on by the Minutemen within three days. Every squad that attempted a counterattack, including the ones Gray Claw had rallied, was completely shattered on first contact.

The Minutemen crushed the tribe he had once believed to be invincible as easily as crushing a cockroach. The men he knew, those with whom he’d shared wine and meat by the campfire, and bellowed war chants in the arena, fell one after another, their blood seeping into the cracks of Nuka-Town USA’s stone slabs, without even a proper death cry to leave behind.

Every warbeast was killed.

Those wild dogs and mutated wolves, raised by Gray Claw himself and tamed over generations, were all dead.

He found the remains of one of them on the wasteland, a mutated gray wolf he’d raised from a pup, with a tuft of white fur behind its ear, whom he’d named “White Ears.”

Half of White Ears’ body had been blown away by the explosion; the remaining half lay beneath a dead tree, its eyes still open. Gray Claw crouched beside the corpse and reached out to close those wide-open eyes; the eyelids were still warm to the touch.

He crouched beside the body for a long time.

But Gray Claw was a beastmaster, and a beastmaster possesses more than just brute strength; he also possesses patience.

A beastmaster can crouch in the wilderness for three days just to track a group of people, or for three years just to revive an extinct gang.

He suddenly remembered something.

Earlier, he’d been leading a pack of hounds through the Safari Adventure Zone to capture Ghoulrillas, that had been Mason’s order; the arena needed new attractions, and the sight of Ghoulrillas fighting living humans was what most stirred the audience’s frenzy. He’d camped out in the Safari Adventure Zone for several days, using traps and bait to capture a few adult Ghoulrillas.

But in the process, he discovered something else, Gatorclaws.

There were about a dozen of those Gatorclaws. They had taken over a marshy depression deep within the Safari Adventure Zone, turning it into their nest. The muddy ground was littered with their heavy claw prints, each as big as a human head.

At the time, Gray Claw observed them from a distance for an entire afternoon, and the more he watched, the more familiar they seemed. Their appearance and behavior were strikingly similar to that of Deathclaws guarding a nest and incubating eggs.

Back then, the Pack was still around, so there was no need to risk being torn to pieces by a group of Gatorclaws.

So he simply left with the Ghoulrilla.

Things were different now. He lacked everything, except the courage to take risks.

Gray Claw recalled what the old animal trainer from the previous generation of the Pack had once said: Deathclaws could be tamed, some true masters of animal training could even raise female Deathclaws as laying hens,

That old tamer said he’d seen a woman on the West Coast raising a fully grown female Deathclaw, and every day she used the eggs laid by that Deathclaw to make a Wasteland omelet that was absolutely delicious.

Gray Claw thought about it; it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with that,

Deathclaws have high intelligence; they can understand simple commands and distinguish friend from foe on the battlefield. Moreover, they are highly social creatures with a hierarchical structure and a natural instinct to obey their superiors.

In theory, they certainly have the potential to be domesticated.

Gatorclaws, being distant relatives of Deathclaws in both physiology and behavior, should be similar.

If he could get his hands on a Gatorclaw egg and use the electric shock collar he already had, he could begin imprinting and training the hatchling immediately after it emerged from its shell.

He was confident he could raise a warbeast loyal to him, one he could ride, one that could fight, and one that would strike fear into the hearts of all enemies.

So Gray Claw infiltrated the Safari Adventure Zone, spending most of the day bypassing the Minutemen checkpoints and patrols along the perimeter.

Along the way, he encountered a patrolling power armor soldier. He didn’t make a move, but instead crouched behind a clump of bushes, holding his breath until the soldier had moved far enough away before continuing on.

He found the Gatorclaw den again. It had expanded since his last visit. The Gatorclaws had been far more active than expected during this breeding season; a large swath of surrounding vegetation had been flattened, and the tree bark was riddled with deep grooves left by their claws, some deep enough to fit a finger.

Although Gatorclaws were fierce and powerful, they lacked one thing Deathclaws had: experience.

They seemed to have never been hunted by Humans, and their wariness was far less than that of the Deathclaws on the Wasteland.

Gray Claw didn’t charge in head-on.

He picked up a piece of broken wood from the outskirts, wrapped it in strips of cloth soaked in animal blood, lit it with flint, and then hurled the burning stick far in the direction of the Minutemen power armor soldier.

The female was startled by the flame. She raised her massive head and let out a low growl from her throat.

Then it rose from the buried eggs and crawled toward that direction, dragging its heavy tail. The entire nest shook as it moved; the surrounding shrubs were knocked down by its bony plates, and mud churned up from the deep ruts pressed into the ground by its belly, emitting the gurgling sound of bursting bubbles.

Gray Claw emerged from the shadows, scraped away the mud at the edge of the nest, selected the three most intact eggs with the hardest shells from among the six, stuffed them into his backpack, and turned to run.

He thought to himself, as long as he crossed the Northpoint Reservoir and fled into the mountainous region upstream, the Minutemen riding hoverbikes would never be able to catch up to him.

Crossing the dam would be a watershed moment. North of the reservoir lay rolling hills and canyons, terrain far more complex than the wasteland, with countless dried-up riverbeds, collapsed tunnels, and radioactive mine shafts to hide in. He’d have plenty of time to wait for these eggs to hatch.

When the time came, he’d have plenty of ways to make life miserable for the Minutemen and Nuka-World.

Attacking supply lines, sabotaging water purification facilities, poisoning farmlands, slitting the throats of sentries in the dead of night…

...

Back to the present.

Gray Claw pressed on, defying the radiation storm.

It felt as if a fire were burning inside his chest, an early symptom of radiation poisoning. Every breath brought a burning sensation, and a taste of rust welled up from the depths of his throat.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his tear glands were frantically secreting fluid in an attempt to flush out the radioactive dust, but even his tears were yellow as they streamed down.

A fine red rash began to appear on his skin, an early sign of radiation burns. If he remained exposed to the storm for another two hours, his skin would begin to peel off in patches.

Gray Claw reached for a leather water pouch at his waist and tilted his head back to take a gulp. The pouch contained a crude version of RadAway he’d brewed from luminescent fungi.

That makeshift herbal remedy was only one-third as effective as standard RadAway, but its side effects were three times as severe. After drinking it, his entire digestive tract, from his esophagus to his stomach, went into spasms, and a cold sweat instantly broke out on his forehead,

but it would let him hold out for a few more hours.

He took two big gulps, then weighed the water pouch in his hand, his lips pressed tightly into a thin line.

“No good. It’s almost gone. I’ve got to find shelter, fast.”

Gray Claw quickened his pace, lifting his legs higher and pushing off the ground with greater force.

His boots crunched on the gravel, and every time he stepped on a sharp stone, he could feel its edges digging into the soles of his feet through the leather.

Finally, a blurry outline emerged from the gray-yellow wall of fog.

It was the town of Bradberton, a riverside town that had thrived on logging and fish processing before the Great War, now reduced to piles of bricks, stones, and rotting wooden beams.

The town’s streets were more than half buried by wind-blown sand, and the shells of abandoned cars lay half-buried in the dirt.

Gray Claw didn’t care if there were any feral ghouls inside, in a gale like this, even they would have sought shelter.

He charged toward the nearest building, a two-story brick house that still had half its roof intact, though the threshold had been eroded by radiation and the elements until only half remained, and dashed inside, head down.

His boots slammed down on the threshold, and he was already halfway through the doorway, when he stepped on a nearly invisible green laser tripwire.

In the radiation storm, the green line was completely hidden within the billowing yellow-green mist, making it nearly impossible to spot with the naked eye.

Gray Claw’s boot cut through the beam, the light snapped off,

...

Outside the town of Bradberton, at the abandoned Red Rocket gas station.

Josie lay on a military folding chair, her back resting against the frame of Arsie’s hoverbike. The canvas seat of the folding chair was already a bit saggy, but her weight pressed down on it just enough to form a comfortable, curved indentation.

Her helmet lay at her feet, and a book lay open on her knees.

This was the third volume of the Legend of the Chosen series.

Legend of the Chosen was a personal biography of the Chosen written by a well-read member of the Railroad, not some dry, heroic chronicle; the author had clearly put a lot of effort into it.

The pacing of the text was masterfully controlled, fast when it needed to be, detailed when it mattered, and some passages read as if an eyewitness were whispering directly into your ear.

Josie grew up on the Wasteland and has seen her fair share, shootouts, death, mutants, dirty barter on the black market, but the things described in this book were like scenes from a completely different world to her.

Take, for example, adult films, Josie had never even heard of such a thing.

And the main focus of this book is the Chosen One’s story in New Reno.

New Reno, that city of sin in New California, notorious for gambling, drugs, and the porn industry, where the Wasteland’s craziest millionaires and most desperate paupers gather.

The clatter of chips in the casinos mingles with the raucous laughter from the brothels, and the air is perpetually thick with the scent of alcohol, cigarettes, and cheap perfume.

At Golden Globes studio, the Chosen One adopted a stage name and completed his first film in front of the camera, his performance was astonishingly good.

A director at the studio later recalled: “That Vault kid had incredible Charisma and a ‘natural presence on camera.’”

And so, the Chosen One became a regular leading man in New Reno’s adult film industry. Every month, he earned a steady, hefty sum, enough to rent an entire floor of hotel suites on the Las Vegas Strip.

Josie turned to the next page, her attention suddenly sharpened.

The Chosen One later hooked up with New Reno’s most powerful mob boss, John Bishop, who commanded hundreds of henchmen and controlled one-third of New Reno’s casinos and underground gladiatorial arenas.

And his daughter, Angela, was the city’s most sought-after mob heiress.

The book devoted three entire paragraphs to describing Angela’s appearance, black hair, dark brown eyes, and features reminiscent of the carefully retouched movie stars in pre-War magazines, but with a look in her eyes that those “greenhouse flowers” lacked. She wore black leather armor and carried a gold-plated pistol at her waist, its grip inlaid with rhinestones, not merely for decoration; she would actually use it to kill.

When the Chosen One found himself alone with Angela, he wasted no time.

The book’s description of this encounter is written with refined language and exquisite rhetoric,

The battle was fierce; the plot was intense; to make a long story short.

One thing led to another.

Josie’s eyes grew wider and wider.

Her breathing had unconsciously quickened; her lips parted slightly, and she clutched the pages so tightly that the edges began to crease.

A wave of heat surged up from the nape of her neck, flooding her cheekbones, the backs of her ears, and her temples, spreading beneath her skin.

Josie turned another page.

The Chosen One had barely stepped out of the room, his belt still unfastened, when another woman stopped him.

The lady was leaning against the wall in the hallway, a slender cigarette held between her fingertips; the smoke swirled in a lazy arc beneath the dim, yellow light overhead.

Leslie Bishop. Angela’s mother, John Bishop’s wife.

The book described this woman’s appearance in excruciating detail, blonde hair with subtle waves at the ends, her skin shimmering with a faint olive glow under the light.

She wore a black geckoskin miniskirt; the reptilian scales reflected a shifting metallic sheen in the light.

She was around forty years old, but looked unbelievably well-preserved, with every inch of her skin taut and smooth.

At the same time, she was deeply weary of the mob life her husband had brought into her life and felt a profound sense of emptiness inside.

Upon seeing this beautiful lady, the Chosen One perked up and struck up a conversation with her.

His words were as sweet as honey; in just a few sentences, he had Leslie chuckling softly, her cigarette trembling gently between her fingers as ash fell onto the tiled floor and crumbled into pieces.

So Leslie invited the Chosen One to her room to discuss some private matters,

(

Note: Mrs. Bishop later gave birth to the Chosen One’s child, who also took the Bishop name (referred to here as Mr. Bishop). However, the child bore no resemblance whatsoever to John Bishop.

Mr. Bishop was born in 2243, shortly after the fall of the West Coast Enclave, the year following the completion of the main questline in Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game.

He loved adventuring across the Wasteland. He took over the Bishop family at age 12 and defeated the other gangs in New Reno.

By 2281 (New Vegas), at the age of thirty-eight, he had become a major power on the West Coast. The Courier encountered a Black singer who had fled New Reno, Bruce Isaac.

Bruce was in deep trouble: Mr. Bishop owed him performance fees, he’d embezzled cash from the casino, and he’d had an affair with Mr. Bishop’s daughter. Fearing retaliation, he fled all the way to the Dino Dee-lite Motel in Novac to hide.

2287 (age 44, Fallout 4): He remained based in New Reno, California.

Year of death: 2316. He passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 73, never having known who his biological father was.

)

Josie read with renewed vigor, her blood racing.

She hadn’t slept a wink in nearly two days, ever since the General ordered the hunt for the remnants of the Pack, she’d been racing nonstop across the Wasteland, managing only a brief nap of less than three hours in Arsie’s driver’s seat.

But this book didn’t make her the least bit sleepy. Her eyes burned with intensity, every nerve pulsing with excitement; the drowsiness had been completely scorched away by the words on the page.

She ran her finger under her nose; the pad of her finger came away with a warm, red smear, the stimulation had been too much; she was bleeding from her nose.

Just as she reached into Arsie’s storage compartment to find a cloth, before her fingertips even touched the lid, Arsie’s buzzer went off.

It was a short, low-pitched alarm,

the laser tripwire receiver she’d set up had been triggered.

The holographic screen on the dashboard instantly snapped out of sleep mode, its pale blue glow illuminating the bloodstain on her chin that she hadn’t yet wiped away.

A small radar interface popped up, showing a red dot slowly moving toward the town of Bradberton, someone had just stepped over the coordinate point of Tripwire No. 3,

The prey had taken the bait.

Josie closed the book, casually dog-earing the page she’d been reading. She planned to go back and read it twice more later.

She shoved the book into Arsie’s side compartment; the lid snapped shut with a dull metallic clang.

Then she wiped the blood from her nose on her cuff.

She grabbed her helmet with both hands and pulled it over her head; the visor snapped down, and the polarized lenses concealed her bloodshot eyes.

Josie stood up, and the folding chair behind her sprang back into place with a soft “click.”

She bent down again and pulled a short-barreled shotgun from the side of the bike frame, chambering a round with a click.

“I’ve been waiting almost a whole day.”

Josie’s voice came from behind the visor, sounding a bit muffled.

“The old wolf has finally shown up.”