A woman out of time. Seconds before the bomb dropped, she had a house. A family. A newborn son who would someday make her and her husband proud.
The world was in turmoil. The threat of Nuclear warfare was the talk of the town, even cities. Children in schools learned how to duck under their desks if there was ever a bombing, but everyone knew that nothing would be able to save them from the blast and the fallout that followed an atomic bomb. They covered their heads under desks and whispered to each other, giggling and forgetting the solemn reason they ran their drill. They would be playing games with their hands and then the drill was over and recess began.
Annalee looked at the children playing in the playground on the school campus as she hoisted her toolbox up onto her ladder. Oil covered her gloves as she looked through her tools, finding the bits and screws she needed to fix the classroom's ancient projector. All this fusion powered technology these days yet the school still used machines that were made thirty years ago.
She accidentally nudged her wrench off of her step and it clanked onto the floor below her. She sighed and with heavy steps down her ladder, she retrieved it to continue her job as a simple handyman. Or handywoman, as she liked to call it. She often missed the days of sitting at her workbench, designing machines for companies. She had received her degree in Mechanical Engineering back in California, but after her company fired her when she became pregnant with Shaun, she decided to become a contracted mechanic. She already had the basic skills so she might as well continue to use them.
Nate was still at home, watching Shaun. He had protested about her going back to work, but she wanted to take one job and see how she did. All she wanted to do at the moment was to return home and see her son again. She didn't realize she would miss him so much for even a few hours back on her job.
She heard the children scream and laugh as they ran around in the field outside. She smiled, imagining Shaun as a child, running along with them. Good years were ahead of them.
She returned home from her work and immediately collapsed onto the couch, kicking off her work boots and let out a sigh.
"Honey, you're back! How was your day at work?" Nate sat next to her and leaned down to look into her eyes.
"Tiring. How was Shaun?" She mumbled into the couch, ready to fall asleep. She readjusted herself so she was now laying in his lap.
"He was the perfect child," Nate laughed and rested his hand on her head, stroking his fingers through her vibrant blue hair.
She strained her neck to look at him and laughed, spotting the very-recent burping stains on his shirt.
"Perfect child... sure..." She rested back down and let him continue to brush through her hair, out of her usual ponytail.
"Are you sure you want to start working again? I mean, we are getting the money for my leave..."
"I know, but I just want to prepare for if you have to leave again," she said, looking out from where she lay, the whole room at an angle.
"We don't know that yet," Nate stopped stroking her hair and stared at her.
He wasn't there when she gave birth to Shaun, but he didn't know anyone stronger than the woman he loved. To bo honest with himself, he wasn't even sure he knew her enough. If someone looked at their history together, they may say that they had a sort of shotgun wedding. They had found each other at the end of both their college careers and instantly clicked. They hurried and got married before he left for the war, not even spending a week for their honeymoon.
He returned to their suburban house, scarred by the war, and the only thing he wanted was to jump back into that honeymoon phase and live with her. But a distance had grown between them when he had gone away, and it had continued to grow with the passage of time that he spent fighting communists.
She had to wait for him at home while he fought. And now another war loomed just around the corner.
He could feel it.
The weight of atomic annihilation weighed heavy in the air, and just like his time in the 2nd Battalion, he knew when something dangerous was about to occur. The faint crackle before a plasma bomb. The small whistle of a missile before it turned into a tea kettle scream of death.
And something in the air above Boston whistled. It wailed in his dreams and late at night when he held Shaun alone in their nursery.
He hoped it was post-war paranoia.
Halloween was just around the corner and Annalee had planned for their family to go to the neighborhood party and dress up Shaun for the first time. It was nice finally being able to rest in his own home with his wife. And their newly bought robot butler, Codsworth. He had bought the Mister Handy as a surprise for Annalee, knowing she would love to upgrade him and program him. Maybe the machine would help her if something ever happened to him.
They laid on the couch, enjoying the movements of each other's breathing and he ran his fingers through her hair. She had surprised him one day by returning from her job with her hair dyed, along with a case of nuka cola quantums for the both of them to enjoy.
He watched her now, her dark brown upturned eyes closed and the daylight highlighting the freckles on her face, along with the golden particles in the air, floating in the window above their kitchen.
"I have some dinner cooking."
"Please be steak, please be steak, please be steak..." She mumbled, trying to hold in a laugh.
"And it's steak!"
"Yes! How did you know I wanted that today?" She shot up and looked into his eyes, beaming.
"I just guessed. And... it was kind of your comfort food when you were still pregnant with Shaun," Nate laughed and kissed her on the lips, both of them still smiling.
Her lips tasted like her cherry red lipstick.
"Well then, I guess I should get changed," she winked and stood from the couch, walking down the hallway only to enter Shaun's nursery.
Nate could hear her cooing over him and he chuckled to himself. He stood up and approached the counter, readying the knives and silverware for their meal.
"Hey, Codsworth?"
"Yes, Sir?" The hovering mechanical butler exited the bathroom, a spray bottle and cloth still in his grip.
"Do you mind setting the table while I finish dinner?"
"Of course sir! You know, my model has also been equipped with almost every popular American recipe?"
"Yes, but I wanted to make it myself. A little special thing for my love," Nate smiled and started cutting the steak.
"Alright, if you say so," the robot started to take out the silverware and whistled a mechanical tune as he worked.
Nate glanced down the hallway, still seeing Annalee's shadow coming from the nursery. He started heating up the steaks. It might take her a while.
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She woke up disoriented. How could she have fallen asleep? She had entered Shaun's nursery... no -she had only just stepped into the decontamination pod- she looked down at her hands and the window in front of her, the vague image of her husband and child's pod outside across the room. Had they... frozen her?!
She reached forward and with stiff numb fingers, she knocked on the glass. She tried to speak, but her voice was too dry.
The fog on the window started to fade and she could see new people in the room, in strange suits and a bald man. One of the suited men opened Nate's pod. She held the window, watching in anticipation. Why wouldn't they let her out too?
"N-Nate-" she whispered hoarsely.
"Hey, it's alright. Here, hand us the kid." He beckoned towards Nate.
The suited man reached up to take Shaun.
"No," Nate coughed and drew his son closer to his chest.
"Don't worry. Just give us the child," the bald man reached down and drew a pistol, pulling back the hammer.
"Nate!" Annalee pounded on the window, trying to get his attention.
She couldn't think. She started having trouble breathing as the walls around her suddenly seemed to close in on her, and her face became hot, even in the chill of the pod.
"I'm not giving you Shaun!" Nate growled and tried to wrestle the child away from the suited man, but the bald man raised up his weapon and fired, the gunshot ringing out into the rest of the vault.
Her heart seemed to stop. She didn't even watch as her child was removed from Nate's arms. She couldn't breathe as the bald man walked up to her window and looked her over behind the glass. He had a large scar across his right eye and a gruff voice.
"Let's get out of here. We'll keep the back-ups alive."
He walked away and she pounded on the window, finally able to move again after the shock. She was too late. She looked over to her husband as the ice started to spread once more across the glass and the cold entered her lungs before she could let out a cry.
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Dreams of whistling robots and exploding mushroom clouds swarmed her mind as she slept, unable to move, and unable to see where she was. She didn't know what had happened. She entered the vault after the bomb fell, but what happened after was blurred. And it was bitter cold and dark. She would run forward, only to fall off a hidden ledge and plunge deeper into the void, falling over and over again in her dreams.
A crying sounded in the dark and she knew it was her child, Shaun. She cried after him to tell him he was going to be ok, but she couldn't find him in the darkness. His crying echoed all around her and a gunshot sounded off along with her own screams. It repeated each time she fell and every time she hit the cold floor, her heartbeat surged, trying to wake her up.
But the cold numbing feeling seeped into her skin and kept her asleep and unaware of the passage of time. It muffled the crying and the gunshot until she could no longer hear it and only the darkness remained.
A sudden burst of fresh oxygen entered her lungs and her stiff eyelids fluttered open, a sharp pattern of breaths exiting her lungs. She fell forward as the cryogenic pod opened and she could see again. Her hands and knees hit the floor and she shuddered as she laid down, trying to rub her limbs to increase her circulation.
She looked over down the large hall of pods, each one opening, with her fellow vault residents falling out as well, disoriented after having slept for so long under cryogenic sleep. The man next her fell to the floor and looked at her, both of them for a loss of words.
"Is- Is everyone alright?" A woman cried out at the end of the hall.
They all took a while to process the words. They were still living. Everyone stretched their limbs and cried out as decades worth of aches popped through their cold joints.
"Are you alright?" The man next to her asked, concern filling his green eyes.
"Yes, I'm fine," she said slowly, trying to remember something that had happened. She couldn't remember if it had been a coma-induced dream. All she could recall was an infant crying and a loud bang. Something falling? No- wait.
A gunshot.
She held her mouth with her hand realizing what had happened. It couldn't be true, she shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks.
She looked up at the cryogenic pod towering across from her.
It had opened automatically along with the others, but nothing with breath stirred from within. The body of her husband lay skewed across his seat, his arms empty and her infant son missing.
"No..." she whispered and tried to stand again, but she fell to the floor, the man next to her managing to catch her in time. Her legs were still too weak. She pushed him away and crawled towards Nate's body at a loss for words.
She trembled, reaching for him, both from her sobs and the cold.
"They're gone. They're both gone!" She cried out and stood, cupping Nate's stiff face, only to draw back sharply after seeing the large gaping hole where his right eye and temple had been.
Those around her stood awkwardly silent, knowing the highly personal nature of the loss they were witnessing. Then they remembered the loved ones who were outside the vault when the bombs fell. They may be dead- along with the rest of the world.
"I can't believe they tricked us," a man finally broke the silence and they all looked around.
The vault had certainly not been made for them to live in, but for the Vault-Tec scientists to experiment on them. Freeze them.
"Do you think our homes are still intact?" Mrs. Whitfield asked.
"No, honey, I don't think it is," her husband reached over and they embraced, "let's get out of here," he said.
One by one, each married couple started exiting the room, leaving behind their cold time capsules that had saved them from atomic death up above.
Jason Connolly kneeled down next to Annalee and rested his hand on her shoulder.
"Let's go with them, ok? We've been down here far too long," he rubbed her shoulder to warm her up and she stood, trying to wipe away her tears, her frozen mascara flaking away with some of her eyelashes as well.
"Alright," she shuddered and turned to Nate's body, a gold shine catching her eye. She softly reached towards him and held his hand, but no warmth had returned to his body. She slipped his wedding ring off and placed it above hers. The burning cold metal barely slipped over her short thick finger.
"Now I'm ready." She stood back and closed his pod.
Jason held her by her arm and helped her walk away. He looked for anyone else, but all the other neighbors had gone their own way, leaving Annalee to grieve. He didn't even know this woman and he was helping her- what neighbors the others must have been, he scoffed.
Shrill screams sounded out from ahead of them and they both jogged towards the sound.
Cindy Cofran, a young teenager, hid behind her father's back and stared at the creature that had just lunged towards her moments before.
A giant cockroach lay in the middle of the floor, one of its legs still twitching as its insides oozed out of its broken shell.
"What the hell...?" They looked at the giant bug, a disgusting new specimen.
Mrs. Whitfield started fanning herself with her hands, looking as if she would faint.
"Is this what the war has done to the world? Create these monstrosities?" Mr. Pietro asked, leaning forward to examine the bug.
"What happened to everyone else?" She pointed at a skeleton in the far corner of the room, a pistol still in its grasp. Mr. Whitfield walked over and took the gun.
"Honey, what are you going to do with that?" Mrs. Whitfield's shrill voice cried out. Her husband had never held a gun in his life, or so she thought. Surely her world hadn't changed that much...
"Janette, we don't know if there's anything else out there. This roach attacked that poor girl!"
"Oh my god the world has ended," Molly Cofran cried out and hugged her daughter, sobbing.
"Everyone calm down. Let's just keep going up alright? We can't make any conclusions yet," Jason spoke up. Maybe he could try and prevent this group of suburban couples from entering a full on panic mode. Why did he have to be the one with reason?
Annalee looked up at him. She wanted to comfort them, but she felt like she was still frozen in time. She tried to push away the image of Nate from her mind. Maybe that hadn't been him. Maybe he was somewhere else in the Vault, still frozen. But she couldn't keep lying to herself. The gunshot still echoed in the depths of her mind and every time she closed her eyes, she could see the gaping hole in his head.
They all started walking again and she let go of Jason's arm.
"Thank you," she whispered and he looked down at her and stared at her for a few seconds before realizing she had spoken.
"No problem, uh..."
"Annalee. And my husband is Nate. You don't live on my street do you?"
"No, I live in Lexington, but I was visiting Concord for a few days. I was looking at one of the houses on sale in your neighborhood when everything went down. I don't know why they wanted me for the Vault though."
They walked on in silence.
"So are you married?"
"No, but I had someone special back in Lexington but with the bombs..."
"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize-" she crinkled her nose as she shook her head, "-I'm sorry. I'm just not thinking straight right now."
"It's ok Anna. Can I call you that?"
"Sure," she answered.
They finally drew closer to the Exit Zone and another giant cockroach emerged from behind a skeleton.
Mr. Whitfield promptly shot it multiples times ensuring it wouldn't scuttle away.
"Ooh, a pip-boy!" Cindy ran forward and removed a portable wrist computer from the skeleton.
"Cindy- oh Lord- don't touch the body!" Mrs. Cofran cried out rushed over to her daughter, kicking the skeleton aside and away from them. It clammered down below the stairs and she stared back at her neighbors, shrugging it off.
"What?"
Cindy locked it onto her arm and turned it on.
"How do we open the vault?" Mr. Pietro suddenly asked.
Annalee stepped up to the control board, looking the buttons up and down, "I think you need to use the Pip-Boy to unlock the access to the release button."
"Hey," Jason beckoned the others to a metal crate he had pried open, " I found some more, I think there is enough for everyone to have one."
They each took a pip-boy from the crate, something most likely made for the scientists of the vault.
"Do you want to do the honors?" Jason turned to Annalee.
"Sure," she said warily and detached the wire from the device and plugged it into the control board.
A glass case above one of the buttons opened up and she pressed it down, and a giant creaking arose from the elevator shaft. The platform slowly started to descend.
"This is it..." Jason muttered under his breath.
He watched as the couples and other people he still didn't know start to board the elevator. He walked towards it himself and looked back at the woman with the bright blue hair stand on the metal grate, looking back down the hallway that led back to the cryogenic pods.
"Annalee?" He said her name, trying to get her attention.
She stood there, silently, as if waiting to hear the footsteps of her loved one walking towards her, miraculously healed and ready to hold her in his arms once more. But nobody came. They were all waiting for her on the elevator.
She hastily wiped a tear from her eye and rushed to join them. She really needed to stop acting so helpless and lost in front of everyone.
A woman near the front pushed a button and they all started rising up, the opening above them revealing a bright pale blue sky. The air started to become fresher and after an unknown amount of time, they saw the sun once again shining down on their now destroyed homes.
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He watched them exit the vault entrance. He had received word that an undiscovered vault was rumored to be somewhere north of Concord, but no one knew if the rumor was true or not.
He watched as the dwellers started walking down the hill towards the neighborhood and two of them caught his eyes. Even with his sunglasses on, he could see the bright blue hair of a short chubby woman, and next to her was a tall, well-built man. They walked together silently and every so often the woman with the blue hair would look back.
Could she tell he was there? He was only in a makeshift viewpoint a hill or two away from the vault, but she shouldn't be able to notice him. She turned back and continued walking, unaware of their watcher.
Desdemona told him to go check the vault out, sure that if it contained any pre-war tech, then the Institute might be interested in it. So far he hadn't had a chance to open it himself until it suddenly opened on its own and out came the vault dwellers. They looked like a group of lost children. He knew for a fact that not all of them would make it since he doubted anything in the vault could prepare them for the world above ground.
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They arrived in Sanctuary after a short walk down from the vault entrance. A strange whistling noise was heard, and Annalee smiled and ran towards where the ruined walls of her house stood.
"Codsworth? Is that you?!" She cried out and lunged at the floating machine trimming the dead bushes on her front lawn.
"Mum? I can't believe my eyes, it really is you? And where is the Sir and little Shaun? Where have you been the last 200 years?"
She let go of him and stepped back from him.
"What? You're joking right?"
"Mum, why would I joke about something so trivial as that?"
"You mean, we've all been asleep for 200 years?"
"Hey what did she say?" Mr. Able finally spoke up, walking up behind her, his large wife in tow.
"Oh my God," Mrs. Cofran held her mouth, staring wide-eyed at her neighbor's Mister Handy, "Surely it must be joking- malfunctioning maybe? He can't really mean that?"
"I'm afraid it's true. You all have been absent from your homes for quite some time now," Codsworth whirred around to stare back at Annalee, his three eyes focusing on her.
"I'm sure if we keep looking around the neighborhood, perhaps we'll find your family?"
"No Codsworth! Just stop!" She raised her voice at him, clenching her teeth. He hovered away, suddenly taken aback by his mistress's anger.
Her glare fell away and she sat on the steps up to her home, her knees bending up to her chest.
"What do I do now? What do we all do?" She looked up at her neighbors surrounding her, all of them avoiding her gaze.
"We can rebuild?" Cindy spoke up timidly.
Jason looked at the young teenager. How could she find any hope in this situation?
Cosworth's mechanics chirped inside and he floated towards her, bobbing up and down as if agreeing with her statement.
"Young miss, that is a wonderful idea. I know people have often traveled through here, so you all aren't all alone in this world."
He looked at Annalee and spoke softly, "Mum, perhaps people in Concord could help you with your search?"
Annalee rested her arms on her knees, looking at the hovering butler.
"Alright. I'll go," she stood, pushing against her leg to boost herself up, "I have to start somewhere..."
"I'll go with you," Jason looked down at her from where he stood, towering over her. He had questions whose only answers could be found in Lexington, miles away past Concord.
"I'll go as well," Mr. Cofran walked up, and Molly reached out, pulling him back.
"No, you don't! You saw those disgusting creatures in the vault. Who knows what else is out there!" She cried out, pulling her husband closer to their family.
"Maybe I could try and get other's help in Concord. Bring them back to Sanctuary to settle. Molly, I want to help you in any way I can."
"You're not going to help me by dying out there."
"We don't know what's out there Molly. Someone has to go out and return with information. I have a feeling the other two aren't returning once they've explored Concord."
Mr. Pietro stepped forward, wrapping his arm around the other man's shoulders.
"Don't worry Mrs. Cofran, I'll take care of your husband for you," he smiled and winked at them, and Mr. Cofran chuckled.
"I guess you can always count on old golfing buddies huh?"
"I'm still not sure honey," Molly still held onto his sleeve, but her grip was softening.
"We'll be back with more settlers honey. I promise," he kissed his wife and hugged his daughter, holding them close.
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The team of recently released vault dwellers left the others in the front lawn of Annalee's old home. She glanced back and watched as Codsworth started flying from house to house, clearing out any mutated pests that had built their nests in the residents' absence.
They walked down a short way across a bridge, passing the rotting corpse of a man and a horribly disfigured dog and arrived at the gas station just outside of town.
A whine came from the inside of the station and they froze in their tracks. Mr. Cofran warily held is gun close.
"Could it be a dog like the one we saw?" Mr. Pietro asked, his eyes darting around, expecting to see a whole pack of feral mutts.
Jason walked closer to the run-down station and glanced inside.
"I think we're fine," he smiled and beckoned for the others to join him.
They all looked into the window and saw a German Shepherd laying on top of a large tire, a blanket stuffed inside the hole for a makeshift bed.
Jason whistled and the dog looked up, his ears attentive and watched as Jason slowly climbed through the window.
"Come here boy," he slowly walked towards the dog, pulling out a can of Cram he had found from the vault.
It stood from the tire and stretched, yawned and made a curious whine. It slowly walked up to him and let Jason's hand rest on his head, panting as Jason started to scratch behind his ears.
"Guess he's a friendly mutt aren't you?" Jason smiled and set down the can of food for the dog.
"I wonder where his owner is," Annalee looked around at all the hanging tools and miscellaneous supplies. She'd definitely have to go back later.
"I'm afraid we may have met the man on our way here," Mr. Pietro stated, shaking his head.
"Poor man," Mr. Cofran added, and they both turned towards the road headed for Concord.
"Are you coming?" Annalee looked at Jason and the dog.
"Yeah," he stood and opened the sliding door from the inside.
He turned to the Dog and patted his knees.
"Come here, boy."
The dog tilted his head, his tongue hanging out, unresponsive.
Jason whistled and patted again, calling out to him.
"Your owner's not coming back. I'm sorry," Jason softly spoke and looked once more towards the Shepherd.
"If only he could understand you," Annalee said.
"If only," Jason sighed and straightened up, stepping away from the station, "I can't convince him to do anything."
"Alright," Annalee walked on.
They walked away for a minute and met up with the other two neighbors, standing at a crossroads that both headed into Concord.
"Which should we take?" Mr. Cofran asked.
"Well, I think we should take the left-" Mr. Dipietro started to talk, but his words became drowned out by a loud droning noise in the air.
"What the hell?" Mr Cofron and the others looked around and saw a giant insect darting towards them above the brush nearby. A large proboscis stuck out as it's mouth, signifying to the pre-war relics that it was descended from the common mosquito.
Mr. Cofran hastily tried to cock his gun, but he didn't have any time before a large mass sprung up from the side of the bug, knocking it into the ground.
The German Shepherd from before had leapt onto the giant bug and crushed it into a oozing, bleeding mess in the dirt.
"Hey, he followed us!" Jason sprung out of his trance from witnessing the bloodbug, and approached the dog, starting to praise him for his kill.
"It's a good thing too," Annalee curled her lip, imagining what that giant bloodsucker could have done to any of them.
"Alright, let's keep moving," she started the group again down the road and into the ruins of what used to be Concord.
Stores, apartments, and all sorts of buildings lined the street in ruins, walls and roofs caved in and falling apart, one hole at a time. Debris and an occasional skeleton littered the streets, as well as the countless pieces of paper that whirled about in the post-nuclear breeze.
"I still can't believe it's all gone," Jason spoke as they all occasionally glanced up at the abandoned and boarded up buildings.
As they walked closer to the center of the city, gunshots echoed out from ahead. A few explosions sounded off and the group immediately walked over from out of the middle of the street, all of them suddenly feeling extremely exposed and vulnerable.
"So, uh, has anyone fought before?" Jason whispered to the others, glancing at Mr. Cofran's shaking hands holding his ten-millimeter pistol.
They all shook their heads, the realization of this making their eyes go wide with fear.
"So no one in our group has. Just great." He shook his head.
They crept closer to where the gunfire was taking place and peered around the street corner. The action all seemed to be centered around one building in particular- The Museum of Freedom.
People with makeshift leather armor and crude looking pistols were all hiding behind some sort of cover, whether it was a wall of sandbags or the insides of buildings nearby. A man peered behind cover on top of the Museum and occasionally fired back at the hostile crowd below. The loud crack of his laser weapon echoed out into the street among the yelling and popping of gunfire below.
"What do we do?" Mr. Pietro whispered his sweat beading down his face and onto his vault-suit. He wishes he had the same armor the people in the streets had.
"I don't know, how do we know what side is good or not?" Mr. Cofran asked.
"We ask politely Cofran," Annalee nudged him with her elbow and chuckled.
He shooed her away, frowning, "This is a serious matter. We could die!"
"Well, we won't know unless we stop hiding," Annalee stepped away from them and took in a deep breath.
"Um, Anna," Jason turned to her and held her shoulders, stopping her, "What are you thinking of doing. You're not going to go out there are you? They're in the middle of an intense fight."
"Are you scared?"
"Yes. To be honest, I am quite scared."
Mr. Pietro stepped back folding his arms, "you seemed pretty courageous back in the vault against those roach creatures. I thought you would lead us once we were here."
"Why? Because I'm tall? I was just trying to not panic after we woke up. This is different. I was an actor before the war, not a soldier! I never actually fought anyone in my movies!"
"Um, guys?" Cofran said, pointing his gun out towards the street.
"What?" Annalee and the rest turned to the frightened man.
"I think they've spotted us-"
Shots rang out and they all jumped inside the store next to them.
"Look what we have over here!" A loud, leering female voice yelled from outside.
"What is it Rouge?" A man asked.
"Looks like a couple of dumb vault dwellers! Easy prey..."
Annalee looked at the others, horror etched into each of their features.
"We know who's bad now?" She smiled sheepishly and they all jumped up from their hiding spot and ran up the stairs, only to find another man there, aiming towards the museum.
"Who's there?" He swiveled around, but before he could pull the trigger, Jason ran up to him and grabbed the gun in his hands, pointing it up towards the sky and kicked him square in the chest.
The man cried out and fell off onto the street flat on his back, the gun still in Jason's hands.
Heavy footsteps sounded from the stairs.
"Fight!" Jason yelled and started firing as the raiders came into view from the staircase.
They cried out and fell onto the floor, bullet holes riddling their chests and piercing vital organs in an unorganized manner.
"Hey, looks like we got some company!" The raiders on the street turned towards the new shots fired.
"Get 'em!"
Annalee scrambled towards the two who had just died and found their pistols still in their hands. She grabbed both of them and handed one into the hands of Mr. Pietro, forcing him to carry it.
"I c-can't do this-" He started to say, but bullets flied past his head and he crouched down, crying out.
Jason tried returning fire, but his pistol soon became empty, as each shot had little chance of accurately hitting his targets. He fumbled with the magazine, trying to remember what he had done during a scene from one of his movies. He glanced quickly at the others, spotting Mr. Cofran moving closer to the window to shoot out again.
"Get out of there, they'll see you!" Jason screamed at him, but he was too late.
A storm of bullets ripped through the air, multiple impaling themselves into Mr. Cofrans chest. One stray bullet lodged itself into his head, his skull fracturing apart and his brain fluids and blood spurting out as the impact of the bullet tore through his face.
He fell to the floor, instantly lifeless.
Annalee screamed and Mr. Pietro vomited.
Jason finally reloaded and couldn't think of the scene he just witnessed. The image of Mr. Cofran's head exploding turned his vision red and all he could think about was the gunpowder coating his hands and the bullets leaving his pistol as he shot blankly into the crowd.
Annalee tried to breathe and she looked downstairs, waiting for anyone to cross her view, shooting at those who tried to ascend to the second level.
Mr. Pietro fell to his knees, shaking. His eyes widened and twitched with every shot he heard. He glanced towards his two fellow vault dwellers and the dog who hid behind them. He stumbled up from his hands and knees and ran, never looking back at the decapitated corpse of Mr. Cofran. He ran out of the store and down a different street, away from the maniacs in armor. He could hear the bullets whiz past him, but he kept running, never looking back. He didn't notice he was still holding the pistol he never wanted in the first place.
He never returned to Sanctuary.
Jason and Annalee wordlessly exited the store after taking care of the last few raiders in the street. They left Mr. Cofran's body upstairs, stepping over the pool of blood seeping into the wood floor.
"Hey, you! Down there!"
They heard a voice cry out, belonging to the man who had been making a stand against the raiders by firing from the balcony of the museum.
"We need more help! There are more raiders inside! Grab whatever ammo and stimpacks you can and help us!"
Annalee looked wearily at Jason, but he only shrugged, an empty look in his eyes, and started to bend down and rifle through the clothes of the dead bodies on the street.
The dog followed Jason and Annalee as they entered the doors of the Museum, unprepared for what was on the other side.
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Deacon had followed the small group into Concord. He had left his shelter near the vault after he realized that the dwellers would reside in the run-down neighborhood below. It was a smart choice for a new settlement, since the only troubles in the area were the occasional mutated bug or raiders in Concord. The latter being taken care of already by the splinter group who had left. He made sure to stay away from the main fighting. He didn't want to get involved or noticed, as they would probably remember him, since he would be the first non-hostile person they would have met.
No, he stayed away, just far enough to not be noticed by the dwellers or the raiders, but watch the street below.
The fact that they were still alive after fighting the raiders surprised him, but raiders were small compared to the other dangers of the commonwealth.
He waited on the church roof, hidden behind the peeling white walls of the tower. They had entered the museum of freedom, helping the settlers trapped inside the building.
He recognized the man on the balcony. From his view, he could only see his outfit and hat, but from what he could tell, the man had been wearing classic Minutemen attire and firing the laser rifle, a staple of the Minutemen ranks.
He didn't know they were still alive after what happened at Quincy.
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