What Goes Around Comes Around

This is a story set in the Fallout world created by Bethesda Softworks. I did not create the world. But it is my characters and story line, I hope you enjoy.

   The year is 2277, 200 years after the nuclear war that ravaged the world. The world is barley getting by. Human kind is barely holding on, there is the constant struggle just to live. Most civilized people in the DC area have banded together and made towns, others like the raiders and slavers have turn into monsters. There are no living plants in the Capital Wasteland (the area around Washington DC) seeing as how all the water is irradiated. Various creatures where mutated by the radiation, some where killed. The main power in the land is the Enclave, a mockery of the US government.

What happened to the humans that where caught in the radiation? Most of them died, but some of the unfortunate lived. These humans lost their hair and their skin, they look like zombies, but some have still retained their humanness. They can still talk, they can still reason, and they still live like humans. They are every bit the same as you and I; although some people don’t see them that way, some people consider them monsters and abominations. One such man has taken this stance to the extreme, killing any ghoul he sees, friend and foe alike. This one man will learn the valuable lesson of what goes around comes around. This man, John Henry, will learn the concept of karma the hard way.

“I said I’m not paying 10 caps for this junk! It tastes like Brahmin s**t! Now give me a refund or will take one!” John said in an angry yell. John Henry was a name everyone had heard of and no one wanted to mess with. He was a bounty hunter, but unlike the normal bounty hunters he only hunted ghouls. He killed every ghoul he saw, unless someone else owned the ghoul, and then he would usually buy it and then kill it. The concepts of kindness and mercy were lost on him, but not the concepts of brutality and cruelty. He was tall, dark, and rugged, wearing a dark trench coat with a sniper rifle and a machine gun strapped to his back. He also had a revolver on each hip and a sawed-off shotgun on his lower back.

“Okay, okay,” said the bartender, “I’ll give you your caps back just let me get it.” The bartender rushed off into the back room to get the key for the cash register. John Henry didn’t have the time to wait he was hunting a rather slippery ghoul at the moment. Every minute that went by was a minute longer the ghoul got ahead of him. John took his revolver and smashed open the cash register, took all the caps and left the bar. “That will teach him to try and swindle me again, ha ha ha.” John laughed as he mounted his black motorcycle.

Ten minutes later he was on the ghoul’s trail again closing in. He stopped up on the ridge, dismounted his motorcycle and took out his sniper rifle. He always kept it loaded, and didn’t have to worry about putting a bullet in the chamber now. He put down the small bipod that was attached to the barrel of the gun and sat down. He looked through the scope and made some adjustments. Ready to kick some ghoul a*s, he thought, only a little while longer. Two minutes later he could see someone running across the Wasteland below him. He put his scope on it; it was the ghoul that had escaped him three times before, well not this time. This time he was going to paint the dirt red with the ghoul’s blood. He put the cross hairs on the ghoul’s head, then raised it a bit for the distance and ahead of him, on account that he was running, then he gently squeezed the trigger.

The gun rocked his body and he jacked another shell into the chamber. He looked for the ghoul; there he was, missing half his head lying on the ground, blood gushing from the wound. “I told you I would stain the Wasteland red with you blood, ha ha ha.” He cackled as he stood up and put another shell into the magazine of his gun.

“You should have left him alone, and then I wouldn’t have to do this.” The voice came from behind him; he turned around slowly to look at the young woman standing behind him. Hunting rifle pointed right at his heart.

“Now look her missy you don’t want to be doing this. You miss by even an inch and I’ll have my guns out and you’ll be dead to. Are you sure…” he was cut off by the sound of the gun going off and the thud of the bullet hitting his body. He looked down at the blood and then up at the girl with the gun. Standing next to her was the ghoul he had just shot. “What the… hell? I just shot you,” he said in a pained voice as he fell to his knees. He tried to pull out one of his revolvers but he couldn’t get a good enough grip on it. He was loosing too much blood, and blood meant strength.

“That was just a decoy, it was a feral ghoul I found and told to run that way. You know how those ferals are they don’t attack their own kind, and they don’t have any real thought function. I just put my clothes on him and told it to run by just in time so you would think it was me. One of your downfalls, John Henry Bart is your pride, and you think you are so smart and can anticipate our every move. Well I think you met your match John, to bad your dead now.”

The last few words didn’t make any sense to him, and why was it getting dark when the sun was still up? Now the world was turning on its side, just then he realized it. He was dying… no scratch that, he was dead.

Reviews

[Decanter Red]

Wow! It's rare that I read an action style piece which is similar to my older works (I don't write it so much now, more into light novel genre). I might be biased to reviewing this because I love a good action, so yeah, John Henry is so cool haha! I like the shabby, seedy side of this environment, a very zombified Resident Evil world. The only thing you might need to change is to add space between the paragraphs like published books do, it will make readers more comfortable while reading. :) keep it up!

[Joshua Hunter]

Thank you so much I will change that now!

[Decanter Red]

Yep, I read it and it's so much better! :)

[Joshua Hunter]

Thanks for the input! Feel free to correct/review more of my stories because you have a unique good point of view!

[UseMeAbuseMeCureMe]

I like John Henry, he's a concrete character, I can really picture him in my head. I like the idea of the story to, that some ghouls are like us and others aren't. Keep it up :)

[Joshua Hunter]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!