Wanderer's Diary: Other Sides

Sam Warrick - The Battle of Fairfax:

A boot crushed a cigarette underfoot.

Sam Warrick ground it into the dirt and grabbed his .308 sniper rifle off the floor. To the east, ahead of him, he saw a gathering of ruined buildings where a town once stood before the Great War reduced it to this. The Fairfax ruins were now nothing but another den for chem-addicted raiders. It was a dive. A wretched place of so little value that not even the Brotherhood Outcasts from Fort Independence had bothered to clear it out.

Fort Independence lay just beyond Fairfax, and it was the main base of the Outcasts these days. They were a group of men so dedicated to their principles of being jackasses, that when the Brotherhood of Steel that they were once a part of started helping people instead of gathering technology to hoard, they all abandoned it to form a splinter group in protest.

Sam was a raider, so he was hardly one to help people. He didn't resent the Outcasts any for being selfish and nasty, because he too was selfish and nasty. He did resent them for their snobbery though. Outcasts were all the same; sneering at you from inside their red-painted tin can suits and insulting locals at any chance they got. Classism was just not something that a free-spirited anarchist like Sam could get behind. It was the same reason he hated Tenpenny Tower and its residents so deeply.

And today, he felt like killing a few Outcasts.

He walked over to a nearby corpse; a wastelander that he had shot just a minute ago. He had been hoping that the man would have something of value on his person. Whether it be caps or something he could sell for caps, Sam needed something. It had been all too long since he had had enough to enjoy a week at Evergreen Mills.

Smiling Jack, that prick, always cleaned him out at the bazaar. And Madame's girls were cheap, but the cost to see them regularly was much steeper. For a raider town, Evergreen Mills should've been a lot easier on Sam's wallet than it was. Alas, he could not settle for less. When he went there to enjoy himself, he went all-out. He wanted the most expensive drinks, the best girls, and the highest stakes in his card games.

Fortunately for him, Sam Warrick was one of the best raiders in the Capital Wasteland. He wasn't impaired by chem addiction like so many of his brethren, and he was a crack shot from years of practice. No man ever escaped once they were in his sights. And as long as he chose the right targets, there was quite a career to be made in that.

Most raiders got together in their gangs, found a hovel to crawl inside, vandalise and decorate with human body parts, and just waited until travellers passed through the area for them to rob. If they had slightly more ambition, they would attack minor settlements or homes, but this rarely worked out well. That idiot Boppo, for example, got himself killed a while ago when he tried to take on Megaton by himself. He was shot by the sheriff for his trouble.

Not that it was always a disaster. That psychopath Torcher notoriously managed to take over a Brotherhood of Steel outpost. That was impressive. Sam never liked Torcher, who was obviously nuts and incredibly stupid, but he did have to respect his accomplishment.

None of that was Sam's style though. He worked alone, with rare exceptions, and that worked out just fine for him. He was different because he was proactive. He didn't wait for caravans to cross his path so that he could rob them. He hunted his foes, just like he hunted down this man, and that was where the caps were: Pick somebody with some nice stuff, and start shooting.

The tan-skinned man frowned at the body though. Not for the first time in recent days, he had made a bad call and killed a man that really had nothing. Just a baseball and a glove. Hardly anything he could make big caps off of. And the last guy he killed before that only had a single jet inhaler. This was the kind of desperation that pushed him to visit Fairfax.

He looked back up at the distant ruins, peering at them over his sunglasses. The raider gang living there were Merlow's people. They were all worthless in a fight, but Sam knew, as well as anyone in Evergreen Mills knew, that they had some damn good weapons behind them. Merlow couldn't help but boast whenever he visited that his gang had "missile launchers and shit," which he said they used to scare off the Outcasts.

Now, Sam Warrick had a low opinion of most of his fellow raiders, and Merlow especially, so he doubted that the Outcasts were really that frightened of a single gang of drugged-up morons. They could probably have wiped out Merlow's gang at any time they felt like it. They probably just didn't want to put in the effort. Nevertheless, Merlow was right about one thing.

Missile launchers were a threat to the Outcasts.

That's what Sam was counting on. Though Merlow was too much of a poser to do anything more impressive than just live next to the Outcasts and talk about how hardcore he was for having so many missile launchers (a whole TWO of them!), Sam had bigger plans. He'd kill those Fairfax fuckers, he'd take their missile launchers, and he was going to bag himself some power armour today.

Not many people could wear power armour, but it was still valuable stuff. Every suit got snatched up by the Brotherhood or the Outcasts, so if anybody else could wear it, they'd pay greatly for it. And if not, there were plenty of people who'd just pay for the scrap metal, because there was a lot of metal in power armour. A lot of other components too. Sam didn't understand the technical details, but it didn't matter. Power armour was valuable, and that's all he really needed to know. He just had to get a suit of it off one of those bastards.

And to do that, he needed a missile launcher.

"Okay, Merlow, you bastard. It's time to die."

Sam loaded a fresh clip into his rifle and checked his belt to make sure that he had his combat knife at the ready. Slicking back his short, blond hair and pushing his sunglasses up onto his forehead, he took a look through the scope. By one of the buildings in the distance, he saw a dark-skinned raider drawing a sawn-off shotgun and running off into the ruins, soon obscured from view.

He lowered the rifle and raised an eyebrow.

"Huh."

Looks like he was about to see some action.

Checking himself quickly to make sure he had left nothing behind, Sam lowered his gun and sprinted across the open ground towards the ruins. Nobody else seemed to notice his approach, so he abandoned subtlety and made a dash for what may have once been the main street of the town.

A set of steps leading up to a tall building were on his left, and to his right was a bus stop. The road ahead of him dipped down, and its path was partially blocked off by fences constructed from scrap metal. Just in front of them, an old pre-war car was left stuck in the middle of the road. To the right of the road was a raised platform where the ground stayed level, and over there, Sam could see the roof covering of a metro entrance, just to the side of a rusted balcony on a nearby building.

And beyond the crude barricades, he could see a number of raiders standing in the middle of the street and firing at something off to the right. The road turned up ahead, but Sam's view was blocked by the raised platform. He couldn't tell who they were shooting at, but he decided to take opportunity anyway. He raised his sniper rifle.

BLAM! BLAM!

Two shots, two kills. The raiders he had fired at dropped in the middle of the road just in time for a mighty explosion to burn their bodies to a crisp.

KABOOM!

Sam recoiled. He hadn't been expecting that, but he knew what it was. Somebody just threw a grenade at those two.

Deciding not to make this an easy fight, Sam backtracked to the edge of the Fairfax ruins and ducked behind one of the buildings. He ran in the direction that the raider he had seen before had came from, soon finding a door into one of the buildings on the outer perimeter. In the distance, more explosions could be heard. Sam climbed the stairs.

Upon reaching the top floor, he had to stop. A dead raider woman already lay in the middle of the floor, seemingly lacking any weapons. The attacker had taken her gun, if she ever had one.

Sam crouched down and shuffled over to a square-shaped hole in the wall that was probably once a window. He stuck his rifle outside and peered through the scope. He overlooked an alleyway. There were more bodies outside, and a scorch mark or two on the walls indicated that grenades had been detonated here as well. The attacker though was already gone. He had obviously moved onto main street.

"Alrighty..."

Sam Warrick held up his rifle in his right hand and placed his left on the window's edge. After taking a moment to collect himself and get ready, he vaulted over and out of the window, dropping a floor down and landing on both feet. His free hand helped him to break the fall and not go collapsing, but he grunted on impact nonetheless.

"Grrr! Fuck..." He pulled himself up and dusted off his leather armour. "I'm getting too old for this shit..."

Wiping the gravel off his hand, he looked left and right, and reloaded his sniper rifle again. Then he made a dash down the alleyway, heading in the direction he had heard the explosions.

"C'mon... Where are you?"

Sam reached the end of the alley. He stopped, and huddled against the wall. With trepidation, he poked his head around and looked out. He was on the raised platform area now, as there were a set of steps just in front of him that led down to street level. The explosions had stopped, but there were still sounds of gunfire in the distance. Except now it was coming from the north, possibly on main street.

He dashed over to the steps, but stopped before he began to descend. Halfway down the steps, having obviously fallen down there, a black man with a silver nose piercing and a green mohawk was bleeding from the neck. He was clutching at his wound with one hand and crying, his other hand limply hanging by his side and bleeding as well. He looked up at Sam.

"S-Sam? Sam Warrick? That you?" asked Merlow.

Sam's momentary look of surprise soon gave way to a sly smile.

"Thank God you're here!" Merlow grunted and tried to sit up. "Listen, man. I'm in a bad way here. You gotta help. Go kill that vault-dweller fuck out there! He fucking shot me in the neck! Bastard took my shotgun, so I can't get him myself... Nyrgh... Just go! Get him! I'll be fine... I just need ta..."

Sam cocked his rifle.

"Uh..."

He pointed it at Merlow.

"...Sam?"

BLAM!

And like that, Merlow's head was nothing but chunks. His body slumped back down again, and Sam laughed. Not a loud laugh, since he didn't want to attract attention, but he couldn't help but laugh anyway. This was a kill that had been a long time coming.

"Ah..." he sighed. "Merlow, you fucking asshole. That was great."

There was a scream in the direction of main street. Sam's smile disappeared, and he leapt down the stairs in two bounds, landing in the street. Up ahead, in the same place that he had shot the two raiders before and where he had seen the first grenade explosion, another two raiders were now backing up, both female. They were retreating in his direction, their backs to Sam as they fired to their lefts at an unseen enemy.

Sam chuckled and raised his sniper rifle.

"It's like Christmas morning."

At that moment, another man appeared at the far end of the street, jumping out into view. Sam barely had time to register his presence before he shot the closest of the two raiders through the back of the skull. She screamed. The other raider heard her and turned around in surprise, having noticed that the newcomer hadn't fired yet and hearing the sound of Sam's gunshot. She looked directly at him for a split second, and was about to point her gun at him when she was then also shot by the man behind her. Her head exploded in a shower of gore, and her body thumped as it hit the ground.

The street now clear, the two men stared at each other.

"Men" might have been the wrong word though. Sam balked as he saw that the other guy who had been killing all of Merlow's gang was just a kid. If he was a man, it was just barely. He couldn't have been any older than nineteen. His skin was pale white and he had short, dark hair and a thin layer of stubble covering his face.

Merlow's description of him as a "vault-dweller fuck" wasn't unwarranted either, as the youngster was wearing a bright blue vault jumpsuit. It had a metal shoulder pad on its left side and a smaller leather one on its right. An ammo belt crossed the chest, and a leather pouch hung from his regular belt on his left side. On the vault kid's right side, more leather pads covered his thigh and knee. He wore a pair of black boots, and both his forearms were covered with metal bracelets.

And on his right arm, there was the Pip-Boy. Oh yes. He knew who this was. He'd heard about him on the radio just this morning, in fact.

Sam Warrick grinned.

"The Lone Wanderer, I presume?" he called out. "Big mistake wandering these wastes alone, my friend! You might just get yourself shot."

To his surprise, the Wanderer grinned back at him. That alone was interesting enough. Nobody that young ever reacted so positively to a death threat.

"Oh, please, tell me more..." the Wanderer replied.

He raised a 10mm pistol and pointed it at Sam. It was the same gun he had used to shoot the raider just now. A poor weapon, really. Exceptionally poor. Sure, Sam had known some idiots who somehow made do with even weaker weapons, but a 10mm was nothing impressive in the Capital Wasteland. Even if it did have a silencer, which this one appeared to. He expected better from the great vault hero of Megaton.

Sam raised his rifle and put his eye to the scope, lining up his sights.

"For one thing, you and that little gun of yours might be hot shit in the vault, but out here, we don't bring a pistol to a RIFLE FIGHT!"

BLAM!

Sam fired at the Wanderer, aiming straight for his head. The man ducked before it hit though and rolled to the side. He raised the pistol again and fired three shots at Sam. One sailed by his ear, and he could hear the the bullet as it passed. Another was too far off to do anything. But at least one of the Wanderer's shots actually hit Sam straight in the chest, embedding itself in his leather armour.

Clearly in more danger than he thought, Sam ran back up the steps and took the high ground to escape from his attacker.

"Nice shot, kid!" he yelled. "It'll take more than that to drop Sam Warrick though!"

Realising that it had been three shots since he last reloaded already, Sam put in a fresh clip while he was still in cover, and aimed his rifle at the steps where he expected the Wanderer to soon come bumbling up.

"That a fact?" a voice answered from below. "Why don't you come and show me your best shot then, Sam Warrick?!"

The vault kid had balls. He had to give him that.

"Heh! Coming right up!"

He ran north a little way before he approached the edge of the raised platform, just to be sure that he didn't stick his head up where his enemy was expecting him to. That was an easy way to get shot. Catching the Wanderer off-guard though, Sam got a clean shot, nailing him in the chest. The Wanderer did jump back a bit on impact, but he seemed otherwise unaffected as he ran for the stairs too.

The little shit has more body armour under the jumpsuit, Sam thought.

So he wasn't the only one here who could take a few shots. This would be interesting. He aimed at the top of the stairs.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon..." he muttered under his breath. "I want you to do it. I want you to pop up and shoot me. Come on. Do it..."

Merlow's ruined head emerged from below. In his haste, Sam shot it again, not realising the trick fast enough. In the seconds afterwards, the Lone Wanderer rushed up the stairs, guns blazing. Or, gun blazing.

Sam cursed and ran north again, diving behind the corner to avoid the Wanderer's fire. He pressed his back against the wall once behind cover again. The metro station was off to his left, and he could see now that there was a hanging corpse suspended just above the stairs leading down to it. He expected no different from Merlow and his ilk, but he still had to scrunch his face up and look away from it. Some other raiders just had no sense of decency.

Then, when he least expected it, the Wanderer burst out from around the corner and fired at Sam again, still grinning like a maniac.

"DIE, MOTHERFUCKER! DIE!"

He unloaded a full clip into Sam's armour. The sniper was worried now. He could feel a pain in his chest. He wasn't sure if he was just badly bruised from the impact of the bullets, or if they'd actually penetrated both the armour and his flesh. In his panic, Sam ran for the edge of the raised platform and dove off while the Wanderer reloaded.

Once at street level again, he ran up to the wall he had just jumped down from so that he wouldn't be an easy target. Sam grabbed his chest in the area he had been shot the most and groaned.

"Damn it," he grumbled.

"Come on, Sammy!" the Wanderer crowed. "Please tell me more about how bringing a rifle has helped you in this fight!"

Sam gritted his teeth and reloaded the rifle.

"I'm down here, you bastard!" he shouted. "Come and get me!"

He backed away from the wall and aimed up at the edge of it. The Wanderer appeared with his pistol. Both men shot at the same time. Sam missed, probably due to being in motion and crippled at the time. The Wanderer somehow hit him right in the chest again. His aim was unreal. Worse though, that shot definitely got through.

Sam's eyes widened as he felt the bullet enter his heart.

"Gah..." He looked down at his chest. "N-no..."

He fell to his knees. Up on the ledge, the Wanderer let out a howl of laughter. Sam looked up at him again as he did a running jump down onto the street. The Lone Wanderer sprinted over, cackling like a comic book villain the whole way. When he reached Sam's side, he snatched his rifle right out of his hands.

Sam fell over onto his back.

"Fuck..." he said as he removed his armour and saw the blood stains on his clothes underneath. "I think you got me..."

The Wanderer wasn't saying anything. He was just bouncing up and down and dancing like a child who took too much sugar. Sam Warrick sighed and let his head drop back onto the concrete. He stared up at a silver sky. He wasn't going to get any kind of meaningful conversation out of his murderer before he died. He knew the sort of man he was dealing with.

Sam Warrick thought of the Lone Wanderer as the worthy foe who finally bested him. The truth though was that the Wanderer didn't think the same about him. To the Wanderer, Sam had been just another raider, and now, he was just another dead raider. Maybe more challenge than most, but at best a footnote in the story of his life. In the end, that's all he came down to.

Nobody remembered the raiders once they were gone. Sam lived a meaningless life of crime and hedonism, and he'd be forgotten for it.

As he stared up at the sky, he cried, just like Merlow had cried.

"I'm sorry, momma..."

BLAM!

Sam's head exploded. He hadn't even noticed his own rifle being pointed at him.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" the Wanderer laughed. "YES! AWESOME!"

A/N:

Ahem. Yes. So. This is a new series I started work on between writing Courier's Journal. The thing about Journal is that it's much, much longer to write than Diary is, especially because Courier's Journal is one of those stories that I actually have to research rather than just write as I think of ideas. I may be obsessive, but even I haven't memorised every trivial detail of Fallout: New Vegas.

So while you're all waiting for updates on that, I figured I'd produce a new story to hold you over. One which I can update more frequently due to it not requiring massive amounts of research other than looking at my own previous writings. Hence this story, wherein I plan to retell the events of Wanderer's Diary, or at least some parts of it, from the perspective of other characters.

It won't be a substitute for the main story or a rehash though. You probably won't understand a lot of this without reading the original too, and large portions of the adventure will be skipped over. I'm only doing the perspective shift thing for the places I can make interesting stories out of. This is not so much a long story of its own like the original is, so much as a collection of short stories based around the characters that the Wanderer meets, most of whom are his victims.

The premise of changed POVs also offers opportunity to tell the stories of what certain characters were doing when the Wanderer wasn't present, like during his black-outs. It allows me to go into more detail about certain events than I could in a diary format thanks to this story's use of traditional narration. It allows me to fill in a few gaps and answer a few questions left hanging at the end of Diary for those still curious about a few things.

And best of all, it allows me to develop some of these characters more, because in a diary format, we can only ever get a sense of character from the Wanderer himself, and from those who show up in the audio transcripts. Remember the audio logs with Cross, or Paladin Kodiak? I'd like to do more character-heavy stuff like that in this story.

Oh, and yes, this one isn't a comedy. Well, it being the Wanderer's Diary universe, there might still be some funny bits, but this story will definitely have a much more serious tone.

Hope you like it, guys!