KNOCK ON WOOD: Bellome 2 (Ch.11) (Patreon)

November 8, 2077

“We’ve both been sound asleep.

Wake up, little Susie and weep.

The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock,

And we’re in trouble deep.

Wake up little Susie

Wake up little Susie.”

Kris didn’t have many friends, but the ones they did have were precious.

There was Terri, whose parents called her a boy despite Terri’s own opinion on the matter. Terri wore her hair long and shaved clean every day, wore brightly colored shirts with obscene pictures on them, and swore that when they graduated she’d move to the big city and find a doctor who would make her outside match her inside.

There was Bill, or rather William, who started hanging out with them because no one else could put up with him, and ended up fitting in because he was just as weird as the rest of them. He was fascinated with foreign cultures and stories in a time when that… wasn’t really a popular hobby. His parents, luckily, shared his enthusiasm and imported lots of Japanese shows that they let the kids watch. Bill himself spoke a smattering of the language and insisted that it was better with subtitles than in English, for most shows. Kris didn’t care either way, because anything was better than the crappy shows on TV.

Kris’s last friend was Jackal. That wasn’t her real name, but no one knew her real name, and anyone who did was too scared to say it. Kris personally believed it was Jaqueline or something, but Jackal was way cooler. She dyed her hair black, wore a spiked collar, and of all of them had the best ideas for freaking out the old folks around town.

And then there was Kris themself, who wasn’t really anything. Everyone called them ‘him,’ but Kris didn’t like that much. They didn’t like ‘her’ either, even less. They just… were. They identified as a force of chaos. Still, Kris never saw much point in correcting anyone. It was easier to just let it happen.

…They were okay with being called Frisk’s brother, but that was as far as it went. ‘Sib’ felt weird on the tongue compared to ‘bro.’

…

Kris buried their friends a few night ago. There wasn’t anyone else left to do it.

They’d found a rocking chair that hadn’t been eaten through and set it up on what was left of their porch. That’s what they’d been doing for the past day or two. Sitting on the porch with the radio, and just rocking. They understood why old people did this now. If they let themselves drift out of focus, they could almost pretend it was still the world that was.

Dimly, they wondered if they were in shock. They knew what shock was, Dad had made them do first aid courses every summer since the Scouts kicked them out, but they didn’t really feel numb… not more than usual anyway. They never really felt much to begin with.

Wasn’t that messed up? The world had ended and all their friends were gone, and all they felt was boredom. If only they could stop crying…

Most buildings were still standing. The bomb had been far enough away that the shockwave couldn’t knock down most walls. A lot of trees had toppled and some roof tiles had been peeled off, but by and large everything had been fine. Kris and their friends had been lurking in a basement when it happened. The tremors had knocked a shelf over onto Bill and a bucket cut his head up, but he seemed mostly okay, and when they left their hideaway the town had already mostly calmed down. The tourists were freaking out, scrambling to get to their cars and away, but the natives figured they weren’t important enough to be a main target. They’d be fine.

They weren’t fine. A green mist descended on the town before the day was over, and then it started raining.

The rain. Oh God, the rain. It withered every plant it touched, ate through stone and corroded metal. Buildings that had been cracked by the bomb fell over, often with people inside trying to escape the acid only to end up in ready-made tombs.

The acid rain reacted badly with Jackal’s makeup and the less said about what happened to her the better. Kris would have nightmares forever.

Terri had tried to find proper shelter, only to end up in a building as the rain collapsed it, and by the time Kris dug her up it was too late.

Bill’s head injury got infected, and between that and the rads he didn’t stand a chance.

And now it was just Kris. They hadn’t seen another person in days, now.

Miraculously, their house was still more or less inhabitable. Dad’s study had the roof cave in, but it was a later addition. The rest of the house held strong. Dad was nowhere to be seen.

And neither was Frisk.

They’d found a lot of bodies, and Dad and Frisk weren’t any of them… but Kris wasn’t an optimist by nature. Still, if anyone could survive out here it would be their kid sibling. Frisk was tough… but they were also reckless.

Kris hoped they were okay.

The radio whined as the song cut out.

“...and that was Wake Up Little Susie, by the Everly Brothers.”

The DJ paused, and let out a crackling sigh.

“I don’t know if anyone’s still listening. These radios can survive anything, though. I once threw one off a four-story roof and it could still play afterwards, you know? So if there is anyone out there, I know you’re listening. Things have changed so much in so little time. The world that we knew is gone. What do we even do now?

“I’m going to stay right here. There’s plenty of food, and there’s a Red Rocket nearby, so I won’t run out any time soon. As long as I can, I’m going to keep playing the tunes for you guys, because a world of silence isn’t one any of us want to live in.

“...I think we could use something a little upbeat to cheer us up, put some pep in our step. Here’s… no… yes, here’s The Coasters, with Yakety Sax.”

Kris turned the radio off. They weren’t in the mood for it.

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Bellome had been only a few miles from the small city of Frank, WV. The small community had graduated to full town in the 2040s, in no small part due to Bellome’s founding bringing in tourism. Technically, the town was called Franklin now, but nobody called it that. Both towns had ballooned in size, population, and importance, and it had only gotten bigger when Vault-Tec started taking an interest in Mt. Ebott, and then the military base Fort Ambrose had been established within city limits.

Frank still wasn’t a large city, by any means. In fact it was only just barely big enough to call a city, just like Bellome was barely big enough to be a town instead of a village. It was a place you passed through to get to somewhere else rather than a place you stayed or lived or… did anything.

Kris’s class had gone on a field trip to Frank once. They’d taken a tour of Fort Ambrose, if ‘tour’ meant they were allowed to stand out in the courtyard while Captain Undercut droned on about patriotism and not-so-subtly tried to push them all towards the military. It was dull, boring, and gray. Bellome was superior in Kris’s humble opinion, by virtue of only being one of those things.

Well, whatever else Kris might have thought about Frank previously, right now the only feelings they had toward it were bitterness. If it weren’t for that &@#$ing Fort, it wouldn’t have been a target, and Bellome might still be alive.

For lack of anything to do, Kris began to take stock of the town. It turned out that a lot more had been damaged than they’d initially thought. A town that had held a few thousand people was so much rubble now. Kris’s neighborhood, the main tourist road with lots of attractions, and the school. Their hospital wasn’t terribly impressive--more of a glorified clinic--but it had weathered the blast well. The diner’s windows were blown out, but the rest of it was fine. There were a few more standouts, but by and large everything else was lucky to have more than two walls standing.

When you thought of it like that, you could almost say Kris was lucky, to still have their house.

What a joke.

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But eventually, life had to go on. And so what was left of it did.

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Water was still running for now, both hot and cold, so for a while Kris was able to pretend that everything was normal. They drew the blinds closed, ignored the ruined study by keeping the door closed, and generally went about their life as though Frisk and Dad were just… on a trip. And if they lay awake at night, unable to sleep out of fear of what waited for them behind their own eyes, that was between them and God.

They cleaned up all the knick knacks that had been knocked off the shelves, unplugged the TV so they didn’t have to see the lack of signal message, and kept the radio tuned to Mountain Top Radio, making sure to turn it off when the DJ talked. If they felt up to it, Kris even stepped outside to sweep the porch, keeping their eyes on the ground and never facing the rest of the world.

But the food wasn’t infinite. After the first week they ran out of pasta and had to try their hand at more complex dishes. The chicken turned out okay, if a bit rubbery from their first attempt to cook it. The milk got used for cereal, and then after that they ate dry cereal. After the second week they ran out of both soda and juice, and switched exclusively to drinking filtered water from the sink.

After the third week, they had already been reduced to sandwiches for every meal.

For Thanksgiving, Kris had a large meal of just bread, all by themselves, and then there was no more food in the house. It was two more days of eating moss from the basement when their stomach began to seriously protest. Kris considered trying to cook their dress shoes, since leather was meat, right? They’d eaten stranger.

One entire month after the bombs fell, Kris, half-starving, finally left the house again in search of something to eat. Out of habit, they locked the door behind them.

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The world was brown, now. It being nearly December, that should have been normal, but there was the smell of rot in the air, and black sludge sat under most trees. Based on the colors mixed in, Kris assumed that the falling leaves had melted.

A few buildings had collapsed since they last checked. Bill’s house was completely gone, now. The rest were dirty, dingy, stained black and brown from the rain. Colorful sights they’d gotten used to for half their life had been bleached white by the acid showers. The Mothman statue had fallen off the side of the Believe-It-Or-Not building and shattered on the ground below.

The crappy ninja store that always seems to find its way into tourist towns was completely flooded, situated in a basement as it was. One of the swords was evidently made of wood under foil, since it was floating on the surface.

There were usually flowers even now, but all the beds were dead. A single, brown stalk was holding onto a pink petal, and even as Kris watched it gave up and fluttered into a puddle. The petal dissolved in seconds.

Belatedly, Kris decided that they should probably find a geiger counter.

…It was too quiet. Kris hadn’t seen a single person yet, there were no chirping birds, no crickets… A radio was sitting on the windowsill, so they turned it on.

“Once, there were green fields

Kissed by the sun.

Once, there were valleys

Where rivers used to run

Once, there blue skies

With white clouds, high above

Once, they were part of

An everlasting love.”

Kris made a face. They didn’t need it rubbed in their face.

There wasn’t anyone to see them making that face, so they stopped.

Despite their opinions regarding the DJ’s taste in music, Kris still turned on every radio they could find. He was right; it was better than a world of silence.

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Puckett’s Store was their first real stop. The front sold junk to visitors, but most of it was grocery store. It was the closest place to home that sold food, so they intended to get in, out, and back home as soon as possible.

…Kris wished that they’d gone somewhere else. Sarah Puckett had died at the register.

The smell was the first thing they noticed. Inside, the body had been saved from the rain. Her blue dress looked horrific when it was being worn by a zombie.

The checkout counter had had a massive deer trophy, a magnificent ten-point buck, which was apparently impressive as Kris had been told. Old Man Puckett was immensely proud of it. It was on the floor now, not far from where the greenish corpse was slumped.

Kris could almost picture the scene in their head. The quake from the bomb had knocked it off its hook while Miss Sarah had been underneath it. That by itself might have only caused a bump, maybe a small wound, but it had caused her to bang her head onto the cash register. With the trophy coming from above and the metal contraption hitting her from below, that had to have been a concussion, and with the panic of the bombs no one had thought to help her.

It must have been a thousand-to-one chance. Kris hoped it was at least painless.

The smell was overbearing, but Kris pulled their sweater up over their mouth and walked into the store.

The milk was all past its use-by, which they should have expected, but there was plenty of soda, some of the bread was still good, chips, pasta, rice--Jackal had hated all the preservatives in food, but Kris felt like she’d have changed her mind when it meant that they’d be having Salisbury Steak and Blamco for years past the point where anyone was making it.

They should probably make a list. Eat the perishables first, save the rest for when it was gone.

Kris stole a shopping cart to carry it all. Not like there was anyone else left to miss it.

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“...and that was Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. I’m still Malcolm Mathers, and I’m still here. You’re still here. And we have to keep living for all the ones we’ve lost. Next is… no, not that one. Next is A Change Is Gonna Come, by Sam Cooke, coming to you from Mountain Top Radio.”

Kris found a janitor’s bodysuit, some strong gloves, and a gas mask. Using these, they retrieved Ms. Sarah’s body and gave her a proper burial. She’s always been good to them; they gave Frisk a free lollipop sometimes and more than once they’d slipped Kris an entire chocolate bar. She was good people, and she deserved to rest properly.

It wasn’t a pleasant process. Radiation had done a number on her insides. She sloshed. Luckily, Kris had had the foresight to not eat anything a day in advance of this. It was hard work on an empty stomach, but it meant they didn’t throw up.

They buried her near where Kris’s friends were. It was the least they could do after robbing her store to live.

The song on the radio was a somber one, but Kris wasn’t really paying attention to it anyway. It was background noise to keep out the quiet, that’s all.

“Hey, have you ever noticed how it’s always 50s, 60s, and 70s on the radio?” Malcolm said when the song finished. “That’s weird, right? My boss, the fucker, told me we only play what people want to hear, and apparently America had been stuck in 50s nostalgia for the past 50 years, isn’t that odd? Did we forget how to make new music? No, we didn’t, because here I’m going to show you something cool. You might have noticed yesterday I let the songs play without talking for about three hours? That’s cuz I went back to my apartment--totally bombed out, by the way--but luckily mine was on the ground floor, so I was able to get my private collection out.

“Get ready for something post-2000s. Let’s start with Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.”

There sure were a lot of songs about radiation, Kris thought.

And many more graves to dig.

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It was getting colder. What paltry leaves were still on the trees had turned from brown to black and fallen away.

They ran into a… dog, the other day. They thought it was a dog. It was the right shape, and too small to be a wolf, but it was missing most of its skin. The poor thing was still alive, and it was obviously in pain as it was limping everywhere.

They were almost impressed at how it was still going. Kris doubted they’d be able to go on like that.

It was the first animal they’d seen since the end, and Kris would never have come across it if they hadn’t decided to walk the trail. Not for any particular reason. They just needed a change of scenery.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” Kris whispered as they went. Their voice was hoarse. They weren’t the most talkative person to begin with, and without anybody else around their voice had fallen into disuse. Kris had figured this out a few days ago when they tried to sing along with the radio only to break out into a coughing fit.

The dog had growled at them as they approached, but Kris gave it a piece of jerky and it let them pet it. It flinched under their touch, its injuries making it unpleasant, but then Kris found a sweet spot behind the ears that was still healthy. Kris found themselves following it for a while after that.

It was a tenacious thing, the dog. Its back left leg almost dragged across the ground when it walked. Kris wished they knew anything at all about medicine, they kind of wanted to help it. Did stimpaks work on animals?

Their paths split further up the trail, and Kris gave the poor wretch one more ear-scratch before letting it go on its way.

The reason they stopped was because they’d come upon the fence gate for the vault.

Kris had actually forgotten about Vault 66, which was ridiculous. It was the entire reason the family had moved to Bellome in the first place. But nothing had come of it, so Kris had just let it slip from their mind. It just wasn’t important, except for how it was a huge embarrassment for Vault-Tec.

Bill was a Vault-Tec fanboy, and he always said how weird it was that they’d just abandon one. A vault was a huge expenditure of resources. Anything that would cause them to give up after already starting construction should have been huge news, but instead it just fizzled away.

Kris stared at the sign, thinking. The billboard was still in good shape, whatever paint they used holding up even against the black rain. Vault-Tec, whatever else Dad said about them, really did build everything to last. Even a half-finished vault would still be in good shape a hundred years from now…

…They felt like an idiot. Where else would dad try to go when the bombs fell? And where else would he take Frisk?

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It was a waste of time. The vault was closed and you needed a Pip-boy to get in.

…

Still, Kris thought, it was a… good? View? From the Vault platform. They could see everything for miles. Unfortunately. Entire forests were leveled. Frank looked like a fraction of its former self, but somehow a few high-rises were still standing.

It took them a while to notice, because it was just that huge, but the space between Frank and Bellome was one big crater. The foothills of Ebott must have saved the town from being even worse off, but…

Kris looked away from the wider world and focused on their home. It seemed so small and broken from up here… like when they were little and used their blocks to build a city just so they could rampage through it. In the setting sun, as darkness fell over the land and it was harder to see, they could almost pretend everything was normal. Except that there were no lights, not from Frank, and not from Bel--

Kris leaned over the handrail. One of the buildings was lit up. The museum.

They almost sprinted down the stairs.

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Kris stormed up the museum’s porch, sending the acid-damaged wood creaking alarmingly, and yanked the door open with such force that if the lock weren’t already broken, it definitely would have been afterwards.

They came face-to-muzzle with two steel barrels, and threw themselves to the floor just before a thunderclap rang out.

The shooter swore. “Kris?! Dammit, boy, what were you thinking, giving us a scare like that?! I coulda blown your head off!”

Kris rolled onto their back, the top of their hair smoldering. Standing over them was Old Man Puckett.

Despite narrowly avoiding death, Kris couldn’t help but smile. “God, I’m glad to see you.”