Vault-Tec Must Pay @fallouttruths-blog - Tumblr Blog

Introduction

My name is Vivian Cynthia Tackett. I’m what people in this time call a ‘ghoul’. It’s not a very flattering term, no... but I think it is an accurate name, having survived the nuclear Great War of 2077.

I suffered great depression and anxiety over the thought of being alone in the world. My fiancé and I had been celebrating our seventh anniversary just three days before the bombs fell. Once the first one struck, I was thinking how much I regretted not taking up the offer from the Vault-Tec ads that were strewn about. I regretted not signing up for the safety and security of being in one of those fancy vaults for any chance of nuclear war or world-wide epidemic.

Charles and I... we laughed it off, thinking that even though things were tense, there was no way that the world would fall into disarray that badly. There was no way that there would be a global war of nuclear strikes to and from the United States and into China, Russia, or other nuclear powerful nations.

What fools we were to brush aside the concept.

The nuclear warheads struck the east coast fast and hard from opposing nations. Some cities and towns were wiped out immediately -- irradiated ruins being all that was left behind.

Waves spread out fast, quickly irradiating the immediate area and irradiating those unfortunate souls that were caught up in all of it. That included me and my fiancé, Charles. The difference was that I lived and he didn’t. What a cruel joke.

My primary depression had stemmed from the fact that Charles died from radiation poisoning not even a day after the bombs dropped. What’s more is that in his possessions, I found that felt box in his coat pocket when I had sobered up from days of crying and depression. The felt box that contained the golden ring with a diamond with a circle of sapphires around it.

Charles was always perceptive in the things I took interest in.

I wear the ring on a chain around my neck, tucked under the shirts I choose to wear. I feel that wearing it on my fingers could lead to unwanted accidents since I took to scavenging a lot.

I digress...

After I had given Charles a proper burial and said my goodbyes, I had isolated myself in the broken down living room of mine and Charles’ apartment. The only thing on my mind had been how I wished the nuclear explosions had killed me right away. So when I wandered into the kitchen, I had eyed the cutlery, and I had considered the old Abraxo cleaning products for consumption.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I never could.

About three months of my attempting to fix up mine and Charles’ old apartment in Baltimore, I was about to throw out our Mister Handy that we named ‘Curtis’. I thought he had broken -- his flame emission had been dented inward, and one of his arms had been severed off by the collapsed ceiling.

When I picked Curtis up, he had weakly come back to life. His vision receptors had adjusted several times over before one of them looked to me. He spoke with faded words, and I had set to work on getting him repaired to the best of my ability -- I had never been great at the whole ‘handyman’ stuff, but in this time, there was no time to deliberate on options.

Curtis was the one thing good that happened to me in the beginning. The fact that I was no longer alone had been a relief, to say the least of the situation. We had discussions, and I took him with me as I started to scavenge around for anything that might have been okay to eat. When it came to drinking, I remembered some things my camping nut of a father suggested when looking for water and took to the bay beyond Boston Street when I could no longer find packaged water, and when I could no longer rely on the tap.

I had set up some water collection things -- placing what plastic I could salvage over containers that I managed to fill with water. With them placed in the sun to condensate, I had been drinking what I could from what was collected.

It was likely still a bad idea, but... I was -- no, I am still afraid of death. I wanted to live as long as I could.

Curtis had suggested looking for others after several months of us being alone. He presented the possibility of that if I survived, it was likely others out there had as well. I took this under advisement, gathered what I could of my old home, and walked out with my old college backpack filled with food, a journal, and several pens and pencils, and Curtis had affixed himself to my backpack when I was ready to travel.

I stopped at a shop that sold area maps and had gone off of what I could find. I wanted to head west toward Washington. Maybe, just maybe, there was some sliver of hope in that direction. Maybe there were people that helped each other and were attempting to rebuild.

Alas... I became rife with anxiety yet again. This time, it was because I noticed that my eyes were changing. I was able to see more clearly in the dark, which was a nice perk, but it brought about confusion. When I looked in a mirror, I nearly screamed.

My skin had started to wrinkle and have a particular shine to it, and my eyes had become bloodshot. It was like I had been burned. I didn’t know what was becoming, but the Vivian I saw in the mirror had started to deform... she looked like she was starting to melt away.

Why hadn’t I seen it before? I’m not sure. I never noticed it on my arms or hands. But now I had.

Outside of Baltimore, and after a couple days of travelling by foot, I found others like me. Their skin had started to wrinkle and take on a burned appearance. Of course, some of them approached me with caution, and were even a little hostile in some cases. However, I managed to clear things up and was allowed to stay with them for some time.

These people called themselves ‘ghouls’. I guess it was better than saying ‘zombie’, or ‘wrinkly folk’. Still, though... the term never really made me feel good about myself.

I spent a good several years with these guys, learning how to fend for ourselves, and soon learning that the world we lived in was rapidly evolving into something far more dangerous than what the world before the war was like. Roaches were growing fifty times their original size, and the crabs were getting bigger and bigger -- like monsters from the old Saturday cartoons that aired or could be bought on holotapes for the kids.

After some time, I decided that I had no more reason to be with these other ghouls. Their efforts were recognised by me, and I thanked them for teaching me to fend for myself. Robert, the elected leader of this ragtag group of ghouls had left me with a parting gift -- a 10mm pistol with a couple boxes of ammo in case I was to run into anything like giant roaches, or the bay crawlers (as we called them at the time).

It has not been long after in my travels that I met with a group of people that had been attempting to survive out in the wastes. By ‘not long’, I do mean that a couple months had passed in my travels to Washington.

Anyways, this group of people were being harassed by people that called themselves the Iron Thorns -- after a guy that had apparently been named Grant Thorne.

I managed to shoot some of them, scaring them off from these people attempting to make a life for themselves. In that moment, I forgot that I was a ghoul. When the blond man started to approach me, that’s when it kicked back in that I was a ghoul.

I was about to walk away before the man had asked me to stop. That he wanted to thank me for my help. I kept my back to him as long as I could and conversed with him the best I could until I eventually turned at his request. The look on his face hadn’t been that of fear or disgust, surprisingly. Instead, he simply chuckled it off and said, “well, I never thought an irradiated folk would save us, but here you are. Thanks for the help.”

Understandably, I was taken aback, It had easily been about fifteen to twenty years after the bombs fell at this point. I wasn’t sure how ghouls and humans were to exist peacefully, but I suppose that a lot of people didn’t have a lot of choice in who they got to interact with. If someone was friendly, then having that ally was better than having no ally.

Drew was the blond man’s name. He invited me to stay with him and this group of survivors that were carving a life for themselves in the wastes. They told me that they had been raised in a bunker that had been build for up to ten families. I was surprised that they didn’t mention Vault-Tec other than their disdain for it.

I left them after three months. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome with them, and I still wanted to get to Washington. Drew and the others in the small group had come together and left me with a gift to protect my identity when dealing with others I might come across.

Unbeknownst to me, however, I would come across Vault 16 and then continue my life as a Vault-Tec Vault Hunter. After some information I found, I became obsessed. Maybe for the better of anyone that would be willing to read these personal terminal entries.

In my time, I became known to many as simply the Wandering Vault Hunter. However, there were those that called me Truth Seeker.

Fair enough... I wanted the truth about Vault-Tec. I wanted the truth about why exactly these vaults... these so-called ‘safe havens’ existed. Because with the information I’ve found, ‘safe haven’ was far from the truth for many of them.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Vault-Tec Must Pay