Midnight in Baytown

DATE: 8.23.2224
LOCATION: Baytown | Red Rocket Outskirts
STATUS: Holding for the Night
SIGNAL: Active
RADIATION: Elevated

The electric hum still clings to the Red Rocket. Someone, or something, is close enough to keep the lights alive. I can't see them, but the energy says presence.

The road beyond is chaos made permanent. Collapsed homes lie half-swallowed by the floodplain, water creeping through places where streets once lived. My Pip-Boy reads 56 degrees. I barely notice. After days on the road, the numbers matter less than what the air is trying to tell me.

Every step smells of filth, decay, and the tang of rabid dogs circling somewhere in the dark. The beasts are slow and persistent, gnawing at whatever instinct keeps them moving. I keep quiet and move carefully.

Ahead, the Pip-Boy hints at a hospital... or what's left of emergency services...but the coordinates are scrambled and fractured, almost like the city itself is hiding from me. I have a direction.

North.

That will do.

The Red Rocket gave me a small mercy. Fresh water. RadAway. A little stability in a world that doesn't offer much of it. Hunger is harder to ignore. I'm out of carrots, and the trail of provisions is thinning faster than the road.

Then I spotted the row houses.

Still standing on their stilts.

Still holding themselves against time.

They look habitable.

That's enough reason to take a closer look.

I approach slowly.

The houses don't look completely abandoned. A curtain moves where there shouldn't be any wind. A porch light flickers once, then dies.

Out here, occupied doesn't always mean welcoming.

I don't know who's inside.

I don't know if they know I'm here.

And I'm not going to pretend I do.

For tonight, I need shelter more than answers.

I'll find out soon enough.

Tomorrow, I move again.

North first.

Then east.

The road is still there.

So am I.

— Big Chief