Community:Death's Claws

 is a piece of Fan Fiction submitted to the 2023 Fallout Creepypasta Contest.

Story
With everything that I had been through, I thought that I knew fear. Hell, I thought that I knew fear when I saw those bombs fall. The desperate scramble, my trying to find something, anything, behind which to hide. I thought that sensation was fear.

When I emerged, saw the world destroyed, everything that I knew and loved gone, and nothing left but rubble and desperate, starving people, I thought that was fear. When those people tried to eat me, I thought that I felt fear.

I thought that I had felt fear, known it, this desperate sensation, throughout most of my life. When I was shot, when I came across my first Feral, when my skin began to rot, when I was trapped in what was left of an office building, with who knows what lurking in the dark. Every time it happened, I thought that I had felt fear.

But that's the thing about the Wasteland. It wears you down, breaks you... and makes what would otherwise be terrifying incredibly mundane. Not knowing about where your next meal would come from, what to drink, where to sleep, and how to find something, anything safe would all be terrifying to a person just a few years (Decades?? How long has it been?) prior. To most people today, they are ordinary, just a fact of life. So yes, throughout my lifetime, with everything that I had been through, I thought that I knew fear.

I was so hopelessly wrong.

I was walking, scavenging, travelling. Any of these terms could apply to what I was doing in that Metro tunnel. In hindsight, I think that I was trying to get to yet another place that the guy on the radio had said was safe, was (By today's definition), prospering. Every one had come up as shit. Most were abandoned after a few pitiful weeks of effort, and the others were either barely clinging onto life, or didn't cotton to rotters such as myself. Fucking breathers. Why people were still holding onto views that should have had no place a few months after the end was beyond me. It's not like I was a ticking time bomb or something. No, my lucidity was important to me, and I always did something to keep it going. Drink, anti-depressants, or just turning on the radio and listening to the feel-good channel once in a while. Did wonders. No, it's like I was at risk of turning feral. So why couldn't some people just accept tha--

Aargh!!

Pain. Horrific, brutal and instant. Running up my leg, spiking... Ah, shit. Bear trap. Should have kept my eyes on the ground. People littered the train tunnels with them for some reason. Guess they couldn't find mines. Why the train tunnels in particular was beyond me.

What wasn't beyond me was the damage that it had done. Had sliced right through the skin, snapping muscle and tendon, and... Oh. Is that a bone? Huh. Really should have kept my eyes on the ground.

Still, I had something going for me in that situation. For once, being a walking corpse actually came in handy. What made me could heal me. Bitter irony, I thought, isn't it? What ended my life is keeping me alive. I reached for my my pocket, fumbling around for a while. It wasn't like I had any stims on me, but what I had would do the job.

Water. A canteen full of the stuff.

Little more than irradiated sludge. Would have been lethal to anyone not like me. For me, however, it was life-giving. I raised it to my lips, and began to drink. It was vile, and tasted of dirt, blood, and shit. But I could feel what it was doing. The tingling began, and I could see it beginning to work. Now just to get my leg out of this fucki--

Wait.

What was that?

I could have sworn that I heard a footstep. Or at least something loud and heavy landing, creating a sound that somewhat resembled someone setting foot in the crumbling metro network.

"Hello?", I called, my voice echoing off the cylindrical walls. Absolutely nothing. No response, no-one coming out of the darkness to greet or attack me. I disliked this phrase, but it must have been the wind. But still, I could have sworn that I heard something.

I tried to shrug it off. Whatever. No matter what had made the noise, I had to focus on getting myself out of this trap. All that I could see was a bunch of springs, switches, plates, and rusted metal. I traced something. Didn't quite know what it did but... if I could...

Bingo.

The jaws snapped open, the awful pressure, some of the sting, all lifted away. It was a relief. But I wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. Even with the nice, warm radiation pulsing through my body, the sickness that healed, the wound inflicted by some long-dead breather wouldn't just up and go away after about 30 seconds of not being involved in a dangerous situation. No, I had to find a place to rest, to lie down for a while and let my body and the rads do their work.

Only thing in sight was an old metro bench, a rusted hunk of metal. Would be better than sleeping on concrete. And so, gingerly, I moved, dragging my limb behind me. Pain, abominable sensation, lanced through my body. It was a familiar sensation at this point. If I went for a single day without having some random part of my body be aching, then that was what I considered a good outcome. With everything that I had been through, it was easy for me to just settle down, go to sleep.

Darkness, surrounding me. Suppose it was lucky that I had made it this far without the backup generator deciding to say "Fuck it all", and die. Still, didn't mean that this situation wasn't a bad one. I didn't need to check my pockets. I knew that I didn't have a flashlight, lantern, or any other source of illumination. So, what the hell was I supposed to do? Just lie here for the next few centuries until some shmuck walked through the tunnels and managed to get the generator on?

That sounded boring as hell. I tried something to keep myself entertained.

"I spy with my bloodshot eye, something beginning with D". "Oh, I don't know, John... Maybe the fucking darkness that's perpetually surrounding us?!".

Yeah, that got old quickly. But still, there weren't any other ways that I could help my mind stay active. Not like I was lugging around a chessboard complete with pieces. And so, I was lying there, pondering the "What if I lie here for a couple of centuries" plan. Yeah, maybe I should...

Wait, what the fuck?!

That mystery footstep again. I tried to ignore it. Not like it was anything other than old pipes and my wandering mind. But this time, I couldn't. Maybe it was because of my idiot brain trying to keep me entertained, maybe it was because of the blackness that enveloped me, and maybe it was because less than a minute afterwards, I heard it again.

"Hello?", I called yet again. "If there's someone there, could you please do me the service of finding the generator?"