Linda's Journal-The Wastelander's Lament

Linda's journal is chronicled here by date.Pick them at random or read them in order, the story is designed to go in order or stand alone as singular instalments.

Enjoy!

October 13, 2277 Pages 40-45

August 1, 2279 Pages 200-203

Review Team Magazine presents:Linda's Journal, Entry pages 45-50

October 13, 2277

Over the ridge the sun is setting but still bright enough to blind me. A bullet issues forth from the dilapidated home that survived the blast so many years ago."Fuck!", I exclaim as I search for cover. To my right I see an outcropping of rocks and dive headlong into them as a spray of flame bursts over the rocks. Didn't the other raider carrying the that damned flamer.

They have no idea who they are dealing with.I am Linda , but all know me as Hellinda and the wake of destruction that I have left. Maybe if I told them who I was they would probably run for their lives, but hey, I gotta stay sharp.

As soon as she peeks around the corner, I got her number. She literally melts into a pile of goo when the plasma shot hits her. From her head to her toes, she liquefies like a sort of flesh-based fountain, similar to a wax statue held under high heat.

Running I head towards the ruined house, dodging bullets the whole way, hearing the ping of ricochets ring in my ears. Near the house I find cover amongst a pile of steel barrels. Biding my time I listen and wait. Then I hear it the sound of opportunity;the sound of his reloading. Without wasting a second, I stand and shoot, aided by my handy targeting assistance system, and the bullet finds it's target, taking his head clean off.Blood, bone, eyeballs, and indistinguishable gray matter fly in all directions and as he falls back his hands keep opening and closing, his fingers slapping against his palm as if trying to grasp at an invisible rope.

Back under cover I survey my options. I know there is another raider, the last of his crew. I hear him upstairs creaking around on loose, ancient planks that somehow withstood megatons of force and fallout.

He's hiding, how cute. The creaks and groans of the resisting timber betray his every movement and I am on him so fast he audibly shrieks as he tries to flee. I zap him with my plasma rifle with a grazing shot and he falls to the floor, through a hole created by his dead weight and down to the ground on his back with a thud, the expression of surprise mixed with confusion frozen on his lifeless face.

Ghastly, but that is life in the Wastelands. Fighting people you don't know to the death for some irradiated water, seems to me we both lose, I just get to live another day. Tomorrow it could be me down there, dead, contorted with a grimace born from agony and hard living.

Cannot think like this, I have places to be. I fold up and pack my emotional baggage and stow it away for another day and make my way there, to the place that may explain why my father had to leave me in that horrible vault all alone amongst people couldn't care less.

I'll have my answer one way or the other when I catch up with him, if I catch up with him.

(The rest of the page is smudged and and the next few are ripped out.more entries)