Fallout - Chapter 150: The Oil Lamp and the Ghost (Patreon)

In the town of Bradberton, a half-collapsed two-story brick house stood like a battered giant crouching amid the ruins. Outside, the radiation storm roared like thousands upon thousands of beasts howling in unison.

Gray Claw set his leather backpack on the table in front of him, a table with one broken leg propped up by a few pieces of rubble. He carefully unzipped it, slipped his fingers inside, felt the rounded, rough surface of the eggshell, and then, with the utmost caution, removed the first egg.

It was the size of a football, its shell covered in dark brown spots.

In the dim light, the shell had a rough, matte sheen, with a subtle texture that felt like sandpaper to the touch.

Gray Claw brought the egg close to his nose and sniffed it carefully.

There was no sour, rotten smell, nor the pungent odor of hydrogen sulfide typical of rotten eggs. The shell’s surface was dry, with no mucus seeping out and no dark spots spreading.

He tapped the shell lightly with his finger and pressed his ear against it, the sound was dull.

Finally, Gray Claw pulled a flashlight from his waistband, held it close to the shell’s surface, and shone it on that small area, revealing every minute detail.

When the light hit it, it revealed only a dense, uniform dark red, the color of egg fluid and developing embryonic tissue, as rich as congealed blood. Only the tiny air cell at the top was translucent.

He could faintly see something wriggling extremely slowly inside the shell.

Perfect. It would probably hatch in another day or two.

He’d have to adjust the output power of the electric shock collar in advance.

He couldn’t electrocute the hatchling, that would be a huge loss. If he set it too low, it wouldn’t serve as a deterrent; once the hatchling was shocked a few times and realized it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t associate the collar with punishment

He had to find that sweet spot, just enough to make the hatchling feel pain and fear, but without causing actual harm.

Once the hatchling gets used to it, it’ll obey even if the collar runs out of power.

He put the egg back in his backpack.

Then he pulled a small metal box out of his outer pocket, opened the clasp, inside were four black electric shock collars, snapped into place side by side in the slots.

Gray Claw was about to take one out to test it,

when suddenly, a noise came from outside.

A sharp metallic clang, followed immediately by a hoarse shriek.

Every muscle in Gray Claw’s body tensed instantly, the trap he’d set had been triggered.

He immediately turned off the flashlight, plunging the room into total darkness, leaving only the faint yellow-green glow seeping in through the window, making the dust particles look like floating fireflies.

He grabbed the homemade rifle leaning against the table, pressed the butt against his shoulder, and tiptoed to the doorway. He pushed the door open just a crack, narrow enough for only one eye to peer through.

Peering through the crack, he saw several hunched figures moving toward him down the hallway.

Their eyes glowed with a faint yellow light; their mouths were agape, revealing jagged teeth and blackened gums, with thick saliva dripping from the corners of their lips.

Their steps were sluggish and heavy, each stride as if pulling their feet out of a quagmire; their shoulders were slumped, their heads hung low, and their arms hung limply at their sides, feral ghouls.

One of them had a bear trap clamped onto its left leg. The jagged metal jaws were deeply embedded in its calf. Dark blood seeped out from between the jaws.

But it seemed completely oblivious to the pain. It kept trudging forward, dragging that leg and the trap with it.

Gray Claw made a mental calculation: these Ghouls must have been driven in from the wasteland to the west by the radiation storm.

When a storm hits, all living creatures instinctively seek shelter. Though the feral ghouls had lost most of their intelligence, their instinct to seek safety and avoid danger remained.

If he didn’t eliminate these Ghouls and reset the traps they’d triggered, he wouldn’t be able to continue inspecting the egg and calibrating the collar.

Moreover, Ghouls have a much keener sense of smell than Humans, sooner or later, they’d catch the scent of a living person in this house.

He pushed open the door, raised his homemade rifle, and crouched low as he stepped outside.

But he didn’t notice, on the table behind him, a Gatorclaw egg was trembling slightly. At first, it was barely perceptible, but as the storm intensified, the tremors gradually quickened.

...

Elsewhere.

Josie was crouched on the windowsill of the second floor of an abandoned bell tower, her body pressed tightly against the stucco-covered wooden panels, night vision binoculars in hand. The tube was pressed against the edge of the window frame, with only a small portion of the lens exposed to avoid any glare. She held her breath, watching the brick house across the street without moving a muscle.

Through the green image of the night vision binoculars, she saw the Ghouls triggering the traps the Gray Claw had set up inside the house.

Bear traps, six of them, their serrated jaws covered by a thin layer of radioactive dust, completely invisible to the naked eye; you’d only know something was there if you stepped on them.

Fixed guns, two shotguns, their barrels aimed down the hallway, with trip wires tied to the triggers.

Caltrops, scattered throughout the hallway, hidden among broken bricks and dry grass, specifically designed to pierce the soles of feet.

Ground spikes, a sharpened rebar rod juts diagonally upward from beneath the floor of a house’s porch; a loose plank serves as the trigger. Stepping on that plank causes the rebar to shoot out from below.

Animal-catching nets, two of them, woven from hemp rope and scrap metal hooks, suspended above the passageway. The trigger mechanism is a thin wire on the ground; touching it causes the net to crash down from above, trapping a person inside so they cannot move.

Cold sweat trickled down Josie’s temples, dripping into her collar and clinging chillily to her neck.

This old wolf was indeed a seasoned Hunter, the placement of every trap served a clear tactical purpose, with distance, angle, and trigger sequence all calculated with precision, forming a complete chain of lethal traps.

If she’d charged in just now, using her usual assault tactics, she’d probably already be caught in the animal snare mid-air; her struggles would have triggered the second tripwire, and then she’d have taken a few point-blank shotgun blasts, if she didn’t die, she’d be skinned alive.

She had to find a way to lure this old wolf away from its lair.

Josie’s gaze swept back and forth among the ruins, finally settling on the half-collapsed building diagonally across from her, a former general store. The sign was still there, but the lettering had faded beyond recognition.

Got it. It wasn’t far from Gray Claw’s hideout, and it had a window facing the street. If she placed something behind that window…

Josie put away her binoculars, quietly climbed down from the bell tower, and crept toward the grocery store along the shadowy edges of the ruins.

...

Gray Claw pushed forward, holding off the feral ghouls.

Every gunshot echoed through the ruins, half swallowed by the howling radiation storm, the other half ricocheting between the walls, making it sound as if fire were coming from several directions at once.

A 7.62-millimeter bullet spewed from the barrel; the first shot pierced the chest of the lead Ghoul. The second shot hit its neck. It took three more steps forward before crashing to the ground, its legs still twitching.

Homemade Rifle, This weapon is based on a replica of the pre-War Soviet AK/AKM Kalashnikov series, recreated by Raiders in Nuka-World.

It operates in virtually any environment, sand, mud, ice shards, and will even fire after being fished out of irradiated water. Its failure rate is shockingly low; it requires little maintenance, and parts can be manually replaced with scrap metal and springs. Any mechanic at a car repair shop armed with a wrench can take it apart and put it back together.

But it has one fatal flaw.

The blueprints in the Raiders’ possession were flawed, that cross-sectional diagram, torn from a pre-War firearms magazine, had sat in a damp cave for decades, causing the ink to bleed and the details to blur.

As a result, the gunsmiths reversed the position of the ejection port,

On a standard AK, the ejection port is on the right; when fired, the spent casings fly off to the right and forward, away from the shooter’s face. But this homemade rifle ejects to the left, with every shot, the scorching-hot casings are ejected through the ejection port, flying upward and to the left, striking the shooter directly in the cheek, neck, and collarbone.

Gray Claw was long accustomed to it. Half of the fine scars on his neck and cheeks were this rifle’s “autograph.”

The remaining ghouls were scattered.

Two charged at him head-on, a classic feral ghoul tactic: overwhelming the prey with numbers and speed to break through their defenses.

Gray Claw didn’t back down.

He took a long stride forward to meet the first one’s lunge, sidestepping just before its claws could grab his chest, while simultaneously sweeping his right leg out to trip its ankle, the Ghoul lost its balance entirely, crashing face-first onto the ground with a dull thud as its jawbone struck the gravel.

Gray Claw didn’t give it a chance to get back up; he pressed the muzzle against the back of its knee and pulled the trigger. The leg bone shattered.

Legless feral ghouls couldn’t even crawl properly. They could only scramble across the ground with their forearms, leaving them almost incapable of posing a threat.

A second one lunged from the right. It was too close to raise his gun in time, so Gray Claw swung the butt of his rifle back and smashed it against the Ghoul’s temple, knocking it back a step, then fired two rapid shots at its chest. The bullets pierced the withered chest cavity, blowing two fist-sized holes in its back.

After quickly dispatching the close-range Ghouls, Gray Claw immediately opened fire on the others.

The homemade rifle delivered powerful firepower.

The remaining Ghouls fell one after another under the precise bursts of fire. Dark blood spread among the cracks in the rubble, stained an eerie fluorescent green by the radioactive dust.

Gray Claw’s chest rose and fell violently; with every breath, a burning sensation gripped his lungs.

Now he had to reset the traps triggered by the Ghouls, then return to the house to continue his work.

But just then, he noticed a light coming from a house not far away.

Warm, yellow light seeped through a half-open window, flickering in the haze of radioactive dust like a half-open eye, staring at him unblinkingly.

His heart skipped a beat, and he felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped over him, who else but a fugitive like himself would be here?

Minutemen? Impossible, shouldn’t his pursuers have followed him straight here?

Gunners? Gunners wouldn’t spend the night on the ground; they’d likely find an overpass or a rooftop to camp on.

A merchant? What would a merchant be doing in the northeast corner of Nuka-World, feeding mirelurks?

He aimed his gun in that direction and crept forward on tiptoe.

Ten meters. Five meters.

The front door stood ajar; the wooden panel hung crookedly on its hinges, and a warm, yellow band of light seeped through the crack.

There was no sound inside. It was as quiet as a dry well.

The gunshot just now had been loud. If anyone had been inside, whether human or Ghoul, it was impossible that there would have been no reaction at all.

No footsteps, no sounds of movement, no sound of a weapon being cocked. Nothing at all.

Gray Claw stood outside the door for a long time. The wind from the radiation storm pushed against his back, making the armor he wore, pieced together from toy figures, flap in the breeze. The plastic toys, strung together with wire, clattered against one another, emitting a series of faint clicks.

Several possibilities raced through his mind, finally settling on one that sent a chill down his spine.

Could it be haunted?

On the western side of Nuka-World stood a haunted house, the Grandchester Mystery Mansion.

He’d never set foot inside himself, but the brothers who had gone in came tumbling out within half an hour, screaming and wailing.

One member of the Pack, a powerhouse weighing well over two hundred pounds, built entirely of muscle, came out with a deathly pale face, gray lips, and bloodshot eyes. He was huddled in a ball on the steps, repeating the same phrase over and over:

“She’s still there. She’s still there.”

When asked who “she” was, he wouldn’t say; he just shook his head, faster and faster.

That very night, he vanished from the camp. The blanket on his bunk still lay exactly as he’d left it, and no one ever saw him again.

Later, word got out from local slaves in Nuka-World that there really was the ghost of a little girl named Lucy in that house.

This is no place to linger. Pretend you didn’t see anything and get out of here fast.

Gray Claw slung his gun over his shoulder and was about to turn away,

when something caught the corner of his eye on the window.

A small, soft, transparent IV bag hung from a nail on the inside of the window frame by a thin string, swaying gently in the warm yellow light. The bag contained about 200 milliliters of reddish-brown liquid, with a thin needle attached to the bottom. A few words were written on the bag in black marker,

“RadAway.”

Standard RadAway. Not the shoddy stuff he carried, brewed from glowing fungi in a rusty pot.

Out on the Wasteland, this bag of standard RadAway could be traded for a shot of antibiotics or a rabies vaccine, both life-saving items.

Gray Claw licked his chapped lips, his tongue scraping against the peeling skin.

If he could get his hands on this bag of standard RadAway and mix in some luminescent fungus and water himself…

After all, the dead certainly don’t need it.

Gray Claw slung his gun over his shoulder, crouched down, and pulled two items from his backpack, two candles, regardless of whether there were ghosts in that house, he’d follow the rules and pay his respects first.

This is an old custom of the Wastelanders.

Wastelanders believe that ghosts linger in the world because of suffering and resentment; a quietly burning candle can soothe restless spirits and ease the pain and attachments of the dead.

(Note: In the Commonwealth’s Wildwood Cemetery, aside from the large number of Ghouls, there is also a Raider who is specifically in charge of paying respects there. He will actively walk up to the altar to kneel and pray.)

The candle was lit; its flame flickered a few times in the gentle breeze of the radiation storm, casting a small circle of warm yellow light through the yellow-green haze of dust.

Gray Claw stood up, took a deep breath, and gently pulled open the main door.

The door hinges turned with a stiff grind, emitting a long, creaking sound, like someone sighing.

He peered inside, there was nothing but the corpse of a non-feral Ghoul and a single lit lantern.

Gray Claw raised his gun, sweeping the muzzle across every corner of the room: the bookshelf on the left, the counter on the right, the staircase ahead, and the chandelier on the ceiling.

There was no other sound, no breathing, no moving shadows.

He stepped over the threshold and crouched down to examine the body closely.

A female Ghoul. She was wearing a Nuka-World employee uniform, a dark blue outfit with a gold badge pinned to it. On the name tag across her chest, the words “Rachel Watkins” were still faintly visible; the lettering had oxidized to a blackish hue but remained barely legible.

A 10-millimeter handgun lay on the floor to her right.

There was a hole in her temple, the edges charred black.

Beneath the body lay a dark, long-dried stain that had seeped into the cracks between the floorboards, resembling an abstract map.

Gray Claw thought to himself:

Judging by how dry it was, she’d been dead for about a year, maybe even longer.

Right hand holding the gun, a bullet through the temple, a classic suicide.

He’d heard that the spirits of those who take their own lives, if not honored with offerings and rituals, have no place to go and cannot reach the “afterlife.”

They are forced to linger at the site of their death, wandering endlessly with the resentment they carried in life. He hoped he hadn’t disturbed her.

Gray Claw stood up, his gaze falling on the lantern, its brass-colored metal casing polished to a shine, with a soft, warm glow filtering through the frosted glass shade.

He’d seen similar items in souvenir shops across Nuka-World, rumor had it they were merchandise from some pre-War Western movie, powered by miniature nuclear batteries that could easily last a few hundred years.

Such lanterns weren’t uncommon on the Wasteland; thanks to a certain Western movie star, thousands upon thousands of replicas had been produced, sold everywhere from Boston to California.

Gray Claw bent down and reached for the lantern.

The moment his fingertips touched the brass casing, he sensed something was wrong with its temperature. It was too hot.

A nuclear lantern should only give off a slight warmth when in use, but this one was noticeably hotter, as if it had been roasted over a fire.

He looked down and examined the wick closely.

The wick wasn’t a metal conductor; it was genuine, tightly twisted cotton thread.

The flame was real; an orange-red tongue of fire flickered gently inside the glass shade. The inside of the shade bore traces of soot, a thin layer of grayish-black carbon deposits.

This wasn’t a nuclear lamp; it was an oil lamp.

That meant, someone had lit it not long ago.

Oh no, this is a trap.

Gray Claw felt a chill on his neck as a cold blade sliced across his throat.

The strike was incredibly precise, avoiding the windpipe and carotid artery. It cut diagonally from beneath his jaw, severing the muscle tissue near his vocal cords, rendering him instantly unable to speak, yet sparing him from immediate death.

He fell to the ground, clutching his neck, as dark blood gushed through his fingers, trickling warm down his collarbone and soaking his collar.

He opened his mouth, trying to call out the names of his former brothers, but could only force out a broken, breathy sound from his throat, a gurgling sound mixed with churning blood foam.

A voice came from behind him, not loud, but clear, every word laced with a cold, sarcastic edge.

“I never would’ve thought that after killing so many people, you’d still be afraid of ghosts?”

The figure was clad in full-body armor, clutching a bloodstained dagger.

It was Josie.

She’d used that bag of RadAway as bait, waiting for Gray Claw to take the hook, simple and effective.

Gray Claw knelt on the ground, one hand clutching his throat, the other braced against the earth, his knuckles digging into the cracks between the dirt and gravel. He tilted his head back to look at the figure standing at the edge of the kerosene lamp’s glow, the rasping sounds from his throat growing increasingly rapid and faint.

He’d spent so many days, bypassing so many Minutemen checkpoints, stealing those three eggs from Gatorclaw’s lair, crossing nearly half the wasteland of Nuka-World, and running all the way here through radiation storms, for what?

Resentment. Such bitter resentment.

Gray Claw’s vision was blurring.

Through his vision, clouded by a mixture of tears and blood, the warm light of the oil lamp became a flickering orange speck,

and the last thing he saw was a green, translucent shadow on the corpse of that female Ghoul, gradually solidifying into human form.

There really is a ghost here,

Then his hand slipped from his neck, his cheek pressed against the cold earth, and his final breath, tinged with the taste of rust, escaped through the gash in his throat.

Josie turned away, flicked the blood droplets from the blade, and sheathed the dagger at her waist.

She was going to go through this old wolf’s belongings, since she didn’t know what to destroy, she’d destroy it all.

Suddenly, a woman’s voice rang out from behind her.

“Kind stranger, please help me.”

The voice was soft yet clear, like a pane of glass shattering in the wind, or like a pebble tossed onto calm water, sending ripples spreading out in circles through the silence.

It didn’t come from far away. It was right behind her, almost touching the back of her head.

Right next to the corpse of that female non-feral Ghoul,

Josie’s feet were rooted to the ground, as if they’d been filled with lead.

She slowly, inch by inch, turned her head.

In midair was a human figure, semi-transparent, its edges blurred as if submerged in water, emitting a faint green glow, like a cluster of phosphorescence taking shape.

The shadow gradually solidified, its outline growing sharper, then revealing color and detail.

The ghost wore a Nuka-World employee uniform, with golden buttons on the deep blue fabric and the collar neatly turned up.

The name tag on its chest read “Rachel Watkins,” with a line of small print below it: “Kiddie Kingdom Theater Actor.”

The bullet hole in her temple was still there, a dark opening surrounded by a ring of dried blood, but it was no longer bleeding. It looked like an old badge embedded in her skin.

Her entire body glowed with a faint green light, the radiance emanating from within her skin and casting a soft, blurred glow over her features.

Rachel wasn’t the kind of female ghost from horror stories who snarled and bared her teeth. She was smiling, a very subtle smile tinged with pleading and anticipation, her eyes glistening faintly.

Those green-glowing eyes stared unblinkingly at Josie.

Josie’s pupils suddenly contracted to the size of pinpricks.

“A ghost!!!!”

The scream echoed through the ruins of Bradberton, soaring high above the roar of the radiation storm, before being swallowed whole by the yellow-green dust cloud.