Trading: Tails for Tales

Date: 9.7.2224
Location: East of Houston, Texas

Date: 9.7.2224

I moved north, keeping the horizon empty and my boots on cracked asphalt. Streets quieter now—wind scratching at rusted signs, red dirt swallowing footprints, Brahmin wandering in twin-headed silence like ghosts of industry. They watch. Always watching.

Looking for the hospital, I ran into her: Nora Sterling. Said she was a medic. Her shop was half-collapsed, sun-bleached and smelling of old mercy. Shelves bowed with dust, bottles and bandages half-decayed—but clean enough to trust.

I asked about the hospital. She shook her head. “It’s ruined. Not safe. Follow me if you need supplies.” She spoke like she held the map of the world in her head. Said she lived in a bunker beneath the pharmacy, alone, guarding what survived.

Then I told her I was from Vault 288, her eyes went wide, like she’d caught a ghost she half-remembered from childhood. She’d been born in 288, left years before I awoke. Curiosity, she said, beat comfort. She wanted the world. And the world had left scars for both of us.

We shared food. I traded her Brahmin tails—three clean ones, fresh from Samson’s stock. for a medkit that might keep me moving another week. We talked like we were on the same side of a line only we could see. Until she said something I wasn’t ready for.

“They burn the dead.”

“What dead?”

“All of ’em. People. Brahmin. Meat gone cold—they cremate it. Harvest the acid. Fuel the cores.”

I wanted to drop the fork. Those fusion cores... I helped design them, made them clean, meant to run cities, homes, dreams. Not to eat the dead. Not to turn my ancestors into current. But now? Now, that was power. Dirty, human-fed power. Sold to anyone with caps. Raiders. Enclave. Brotherhood. No judgment. Just transaction.

She said she left because of it. “Didn’t want to watch my mother turn into voltage.”

And yet… she works with the Brotherhood now. A pact. Protection for loyalty, medicine in exchange for obedience. I frowned. “You flee one machine, only to serve another.” She didn’t argue. She was tired. “At least I choose the terms,” she said.

I stayed the night. Warm beds. Clean water. Soap. I even took a Ho-Bath. For a moment, life felt like it could exist here.. still tethered to the bones of the old world, still breathing in its shadow.

But her words hung heavy.

We burn the dead to power the living. We build tomorrow on ashes. And the smell of it clings, even miles from the fire.

I hear New Orleans calling like a psalm against the wind. My steps aren’t random. They’re remembered. My path deliberate. The road doesn’t forgive, but it doesn’t lie.

I keep walking. The way home is long. But I ain’t lost.