Bones & Maps

Date: 10.25.2224
Location: Warehouse District, Lafayette

Today we entered a warehouse sat hunched behind a half-collapsed apartment block and the charred husk of a Super-Duper Mart. From the outside, it looked like any other ruin, rust bleeding down its siding, roof sagging as though the Wasteland had finally pressed too heavy on its back. But the air around it was still. Too still. Even the swamp bugs seemed to avoid it.

I’ve been inside enough dead places since leaving Vault 288 to know when a building holds its breath. This one did.

Inside was worse. The smell hit first: damp fungus, rot baked into the walls. The concrete floor had split wide in places, weeds and pale mushrooms clawing upward like they were trying to escape. A freezer lay on its side, door cracked open, stuffed with nothing but cobwebs and broken glass.

Then came the bones.

Animal skeletons scattered across the warehouse like a storm had dropped them there. Skulls grinning up from piles of ribs and femurs, all bleached ghost-white. Not human, thank God, but enough to rattle you just the same. I crouched, brushing dirt from a spine. That uneasy feeling came again—like the warehouse was staring back. Watching. Waiting.

I pressed forward. Between rusted shelves and toppled crates, scavenging did its work. X-Cell, Ultrajet, Daddy-O. Tools still holding some edge. A couple of battered oil cans. Then the find that mattered: a meat hook, sharp and hungry. A simple weapon, but perfect for ferals. I strapped it to my belt.

And right on cue—they came.

The shuffle. The moan. The scrape of bone against concrete. Ferals, slipping from the shadows like nightmares pulled loose. Their faces ruined, teeth bared, rage boiling out of them. Pinball didn’t wait for orders—FOOMP went his fireball launcher, ghouls lighting up like rotten torches. His pincers snatched two down, tossing them aside in showers of sparks. I joined in, meat hook sinking deep into one’s chest, jerking back through brittle ribs. It was brutal, but fast.

Silence returned.

That’s when I saw it—tucked beneath a collapsed shelf, half-hidden in dust. A map. Pre-War. Freetown.

The edges were waterlogged, but the streets, the blocks, the names—they were there. Clear. A memory frozen in paper.

Clancy leaned over my shoulder, his jaw tightening, then softening. “Chief… we should give this to the Deans. Let them see their home the way it was. Before all this.”

I stared at him for a long moment. This was the same man who tensed at the word ghoul. And yet here he was, thinking of them first. I nodded. “Yeah, Lieutenant. You’re right. They should have this.”

We started to head out, pack loaded. But then Clancy—quiet, stiff Clancy—did something unexpected. He started humming. Low at first, then louder, the tune unmistakable:

“Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…”

I stopped in my tracks.

Pinball froze too, then suddenly blared the full song from his internal database, his speakers buzzing with old-world static:
“Toe bone connected to the foot bone…”

And then—Lord help me—even Larry started dancing, arms flailing like a man possessed.

I turned, stared at all three of them. “What in the world…”

Pinball, cheerful as ever, swiveled toward me.
“Sir! Are you familiar with this Negro spiritual?”

I sighed, but a smile broke anyway. “Yes, Pinball. I am. But CLANCY—” I shook my head. “I’m shocked.”

Clancy just grinned, humming louder. “Chief, your soulful spirit’s rubbing off on me.”

I chuckled, gripping the map tight. “He’s coming along just fine.”

We stepped out of the warehouse, laughter trailing behind us, bones left where they lay. Some places are cursed. But some curses can be broken with fire, with song, with a map pointing back to home.

—The Big Chief