Midnight in Baytown

Date: 9.4.2224

Location: Baytown | Red Rocket Outskirts

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. Shadows stretch longer than they should; the night leans heavy, almost thick enough to touch.

The road beyond is chaos made permanent. Collapsed homes lie half-swallowed by the floodplain, water creeping where streets once lived. My Pip-Boy reads 56 degrees, but the warmth—or chill—is lost somewhere in the march of my boots. Every step smells of filth, decay, and the tang of rabid dogs circling in the dark. The beasts are slow, persistent, gnawing at instinct. I move careful. Quiet.

Ahead, the Pip-Boy hints at a hospital—or maybe what used to be emergency services—but coordinates are scrambled, fractured, almost like the city itself is hiding from me. I have a sense of direction: North. That will do.

The Red Rocket gave me a small mercy. Fresh water, RadAway, some scraps of stability in a world gone sideways. Hunger gnaws; I’m out of carrots, the trail of provision thinning faster than the road.

I spotted a few row houses, still on stilts, still holding themselves against time. Looks habitable. I’ll take refuge there. 

Something tells me there may be neighbors—unseen, unknown, possibly curious. The kind that either barter or bite first, ask questions never. I’ll find out soon enough.

Tomorrow, I move again. North. Hope to find value in the bones of the Old World. And maybe, just maybe, a sign of someone—or something—that makes this stretch more than just shadows.

— Big Chief