Silence... sweet silence. It blanketed the desert around him, a stillness that was calming as always. Granting him peace, he lay there beneath the shade of an outcropping of rock, a cliff rising up over him and stretching below many feet to the sandy surface. Peace... and rest, his eyes drifting slowly closed...
Screams woke him, blinking a bit and finding that one eye was having a bit of trouble? What was this? Touching his face and pulling them back, noting the red color to them and groaning in renewed pain. That pain traced up and down his body, but nothing seemed broken, just burning with constant shots of pain. Red danced over and around him as well. Fire? No... but the screams continued, rising in pitch with the peoples panic. Peoples? Gasping, the man in a uniform sat bolt upright, looking around. The security building had long since been overran as everyone tried to force their way inside the secure complex. And the memories returned, of one of those panicked citizens striking him with some sort of club. He felt lucky as he crawled up the nearby wall, rising and chuckling. While he took a blow to the face, the others were not as fortunate. Gaze sweeping the small security control room, a mess of blood and bodies it was.
The others, they had taken the brunt of the panic and fell beneath bullets and knife both. They had it lucky, but his wallowing did not last long as the survivors vision began to blur. Sliding down the wall a bit, he smacked his head into it and cried out in pain, the pain focusing him, keeping him awake. Oh god, why did it hurt so bad. With no mirror, he could not really find out what was wrong, not that it mattered. Checking the pistol at his belt, the man rushed from the room and down the hall to outside. It was hard to tell what time it even was, fires seemed to be raging in the city nearby, casting a harsh glow into the entrance tunnel that continued to feed a steady stream of refugees into the Vault. Why?! The place could only handle so much, the door HAD to get itself shut or everything would collapse under the strain of waves of people. There was no way there could be enough water and food for this many! The door had to be shut, but why wasn't it?! Fist hitting the wall, the stream of people were ignoring him as they pressed onward by. They had no plan, that's why... these civilians, mothers and fathers, they had one hope and that was inside this Vault no matter what. It'd kill them all, though, didn't they realize that?
Snarling, the pistol was fumbled with, rage welling up in him as the shouting never ceased, the jostling, the violence. A hand clasped around his own before he could do anything, another officer stepping beside him and into the security room, tugging them both inside. "Like that'd help, Jane. Just would tear you apart in their frenzy, a drowning animal thrashing about in its death throes." The other man was rueful, bloodied as well with a limp. No more worse for wear than Jane it appeared. Hand halted, Jane was left to think for some seconds.
Very, very brief seconds. As he listened to the air-raid sirens outside, and taking a step to the doorway to gaze down the hall and out the Vaults entry, there was a flash. Feeling more than seeing, it seared his skin, lancing new pain up and over his entire body. Stupidly, he wondered Why, before the rush of air threw him into the control room, crying out even as his lungs felt on fire.
The cry was real, though, snapping the sleeping one awake. Giving a flail, the ghoul almost fell off his old rickety stool, looking around. What was real? The cry... it was him, wasn't it? Apparently not, as it came again, louder and more shrill. A woman. Sobbing softly in memory, Jane bent forward and rubbed his dry, cracked face with a green finger. Oh... that's right. Pulling the rifle nearby towards him and checking that it had a chambered round, he set it to his shoulder and leaned forward to peak over the rocks that concealed his position on the side of the cliff. Indeed, there were people down there in the desert ahead of him. An expanse of nothing, with specks of two groups. One in the center fighting off stragglers that harried them from all sides. Raiders, no doubt. The screams of the woman rose again, making Jane wince and look through the scope of the rifle at the travellers. A woman at the middle, clutching some small form, screaming and wailing. Breaking the silence of his rest, it must've been her. She took the first bullet that sailed out over the desert, the back of her head knocked out with the single shot. It was over so quick... no one knew what had happened, neither side escaping. Before any sort of awareness was even raised, they were more than half gone. The rest took their bullets to the back of their heads as they ran.
...Two minutes, and it was quiet again. The silence, it tasted so sweet, letting the Ghoul sink down onto his stool and rest once more. There was nothing better in the world than the nothingness which he cherished.
Idea that has played at my mind for months, and in a fit of odd boredom mixed with the Need to create, I wrote this in some 15 minutes or so. Very rough, enjoy.
