Back again. It's been awhile... how are you doin'? You look nice in that dress.

Haha, just kidding. I know that no dress-wearing girls read this crap. :) Dress-wearing guys, however... maybe.

Yeah, Danny lives. That interim before was written by Dr. Banfield from Tenpenny Tower, sometime between the Lone Wanderer gets the Ghouls in and that dude kills them all. Yay. I'm a geek. I think any early 2000s rock fans will like the giant metaphor in the next few chapters. So I hope you enjoy it, and please R&R. I don't own Fallout, so for the love of God, don't sue me.

May 17, 2284 – 3:23 pm

When you regain consciousness, the first thing that happens is you feel again. The pain comes to you before you have a chance to wake up, and you feel like screaming but the brain can't process that. In a dream, you're writhing on the ground as someone drives a nail into your head, and sometimes you die. Then, the pain goes away, and your eyes open to find no attacker with a nail and hammer. Just a couple of tribals looking at you curiously while you were shifting in sleep.

"Aha, the child has returned to us at last!" My eyes struggled to find the face of the speaker, a man near middle-aged, with dark hair stuck into different spiked arrangements, giving his eyes and face a shadowed look. Smiling pleasantly, he reached into a pocket in his black knee-length coat and pulled out a bottle of water, which he unscrewed and handed to me. Unfortunately, I found my hands and legs unable to move, much less my mouth, which was lockjawed.

The man frowned when he noticed my temporary paralysis, and handed the water to the woman at his side. She too had black hair, tied into a ponytail, and smiled at her companion when he looked at her, gratefully accepting the bottle with fingerless-gloved hands.

Kneeling beside the bed, the man in the dark coat began rubbing my arms and legs in a hard motion, slowly bringing back warmth and feeling to my limbs. He asked me to move my legs, and eventually I did, then my arms, and after he opened my mouth a few times with his hand my lockjaw began to go away. When I could at least open my lips to breathe, the woman stepped forward and tried to drip the water down my throat.

I hadn't realized how sore and burning my throat was until that liquid came rushing through. At first the pain intensified so bad, I almost kicked the woman in the face. But slowly, the feeling receded and I took down gulps of water gratefully until the bottle was empty.

Maybe a few minutes later, I was able to sit up some and rest my back on the wall behind the bed, facing the two tribals who supposedly took care of me in this rather messy cement basement room while I was unconscious. It was somewhat awkward, but the man broke the silence first.

"How are you doing now?"

My words struggled to come out. "I'm… okay, I guess."

He sighed. "That is relieving. When we found you, we were sure you were dead."

"Really?"

"Yes," the woman came into the conversation. "My hunting party discovered you amongst much wooden wreckage. You had barely a pulse."

"It is really quite fortunate," the man said, "that we had decided on Mirelurk for supper this evening. Or else, we might not have found you on the riverbanks."

I thought about this for a moment, and in an instant, all that had happened before I had landed in the water came rushing back to my head, and it throbbed horribly. I clutched the side of my head and groaned. "What happened to the boat?"

The two tribals bit their lips until the woman came up with an explanation. "There is nothing of your vessel left. The Great Bare Tortoise chose it's feeding that night, and it is very near impossible to change its mind."

"You mean the… the, um… Montauk?"

"That is the name outsiders have given it, yes."

"Okay," I grumbled. "But what's left of the boat? Anything or anyone from the boat?"

The man sighed. "All we had found of your watercraft was what had washed up onto the shore. A couple of bed frames, an unusable radio, a waterlogged guitar, and plenty of weapons in need of immediate repair. The only people we found were resting farther up the riverside, five necrotic bodies all tied to one another by metal chains. I don't suppose you know them?"

I was discomforted to know that my friends had not been found, but I did not even see a slave, so "No."

"Well, at least they were not friends. The death of a friend may be a terrible ordeal for any man to withstand. But, speaking of which, we are all friends in this place. So please, what is your name, friend?"

Slightly hesitant at first, I cautiously murmured, "Danny."

"Well then it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Daniel. I am Saint Jimmy, and welcome to the Lost & Found."

May 17, 2284 – 4:02 pm

By now my limbs were warm enough to stand up on, and the woman was helping me walk around my room. I had asked her name earlier. Her reply was "Whatsername." Fine, be that way.

When my ability to carry my body around was pretty much regained, Whatsername left the room in search of Jimmy. She left a book for me to read, a hard-back with permanent marker over the front, NONE OF THE ABOVE. When I opened it up, I realized that it was written in the style of the Bible. I never liked reading the Bible, so I put it down.

My backpack was gone. All my money, food, and clothes were at the bottom of the river, or in a giant monster's stomach. My Wasteland Survival Guide, which cost me upwards of forty caps, was probably ripped apart page-by-page by the water. Now I'd never know how to negotiate with Raiders without making them want to eat me.

My Pip-Boy was still on my arm – I decided not to remove it when I went to sleep. But it was acting up every time I tried to use it. Apparently, my body temperature was hanging around 60 degrees and my head was not connected to my body. Both of which were untrue, of course. It was just having trouble reading some parts of my anatomy.

I'd been waiting for some time in the tiny windowless room, after Jimmy told me he was fulfilling his daily deeds, and would come back to me when the tasks were finished. But it had been two hours, and I was more than bored. The mysterious book waited on the table, the only civilized object in the room besides the furniture. Doubtful that anything else exciting would happen, I opened its cover once more to a random page.

"86:5 - And the risen Lord said to the masses before him, 'There will be no more suffering, there will be no more famine.' And the skies did grow dark with God's gift of rain, and the people allowed it to wash over them. And the Lord said, 'There will be no more plague.' And the sick and those banished for their sickness found God's gift of healing, and the people allowed it to heal. And the Lord said, 'There will be no more ignorance.' And the minds of the masses grew aware of their circumstances, and of the sinners amongst them, and the people allowed forgiveness.

"But the Lord did then say, "This is His forgiveness. This is His gift. Be grateful for your gift, and need only give love and devotion in return. For if not.' The Lord paused, and raised his hands. And the rain stopped, and the sick grew weak once more, and the minds of the people once again shifted, paranoid and benighted. Now the Lord continued, "Then He will take his forgiveness and his gift back. And from then on, it will not be considered.' Now the Lord let down his arms, and the gifts of God returned, and all together the world breathed relief.

"Now a boy of Aden stood before his Lord and said to Him, 'That which we had done before, I shall not do. This I promise to my Lord.' And the Lord smiled on the boy, and spoke in a gentle tone. 'I know.'"

Was it Christian? It sure sounded like it. But when had this happened? And where was Aden? I flipped through the book aimlessly and opened it to a page that had come before passage 86.

"14:2 – He looked to the Earth, and frowned. What does man do, He asked of himself. Why are they so defiant as to ring the Bells above Heaven itself, to believe it Valiant? They build safe houses from themselves and from faith. They try to surpass their Lord in knowledge and deed, despite their failures, and continue trying. Is Earth not good enough for my children?

"So the Lord made a decision, and released a plague upon the Earth. His children suffered and cried out to make the suffering end. But most did not cry to their Lord. They cried to their alchemists and doctors to ease the pain of the plague. They had forgotten about God, and He lost faith in them."

"Angry, the Lord went to His children and crept into the minds of the men who led the people away from God. He could not change their minds, and so spoke to them so that suspicions may grow amongst themselves. God saw that his children were imperfect in other ways, and the suspicions led to hate and the hate led to quarrels and quarrels led to death. In the midst of the tribulation, Man destroyed itself. And God saw that this was just, and there was morning and there was evening that day."

That was crazy. Never had Father Helm ever mentioned a book like this. This described an apocalypse that completely eradicated man, which I thought was obviously yet to come to fruition, since I was a human reading that book right then.

I was going to flip randomly through again, when the door finally opened and Whatsername came through. She stopped and smiled.

"Ah, I see you have taken an interest in The Volume." She walked over and accepted the book when I gave it to her. "Each page of this tome describes the truth we all follow in good faith. You will learn more about this book in time." With that, she carefully slipped it into an interior coat pocket and beckoned me to follow her out the door.

Still a little shaky from waking up paralyzed, I limped after her while holding onto the wall. The hallway outside the door was just as blank and concrete. Nothing but the occasional crack or blood spatter decorated the walls. Along the way were doors identical to the one in my room, all in perfect order and separated an exact distance from one another. The hallways didn't seem to end until we reached a sudden corner and began climbing a set of stairs.

I began to ask the woman a question, but she shushed me and shook her head, still walking. We passed others, men, women and even children dressed in dirty robes and all holding knives or guns casually at their sides. The kids looked wide-eyed as I past them in my tight Vault jumpsuit and clunky computer on my arm, but the adults squinted in my direction with a flat-line frown. I felt uncomfortably out of place.

Whatsername continued down through a metal hallway now, and exited out of a lighted open doorway. When I followed her through it, my eyes stung incredibly with the sudden sunlight hitting my retinas. I grabbed my eyes and groaned just in time to hear the woman say, "Don't forget to cover your eyes… oh."

In maybe a minute, my pupils adjusted to the brightness and I was able to see where we were. The building we had come out of was a circular office building with a courtyard, where we now stood. In the center of the courtyard, a gigantic water container stood perfectly intact, but with stairs leading up to a hole in the metal. More people stood around, going about their daily business if they weren't staring at me. The courtyard was home to a blacksmith welding metal in the corner and a large group of women weaving blankets and clothes. In another area, men were pelting a small Yao Guai and carefully cutting the meat.

I looked at my still-operable Pip-Boy clock, which glowed a bright 4:58 in the corner. Whatsername turned to me after whispering to a man with a sun tattoo on his forehead, who ran off into one of the doors.

She said, "This is the Cloister, the home of the Lost & Found." The area did have covered walkways around the second floor – cloisters. The woman continued. "It is the only safe haven for our people for miles and miles. We live, work, and practice faith here - an oasis in a sea of chaos. You, Daniel, are lucky that your fate has led you to us. The Great Bare Tortoise spared you, because he knew that you were meant to come here, that your time had not yet come. Saint Jimmy believes this, as do I. Soon, the entire clan will believe as well, once they are given an opportunity to know and understand you."

I went along with it, unsure what she was trying to get at. I certainly wasn't any "Chosen One" or anything, but the faster I learned my way around, the sooner I might be able to find my way back home. She led me through the courtyard and to and up the stairs around the water tank, eventually to the huge scrap of metal sticking out of it, creating a makeshift balcony perhaps twenty feet from the ground. As soon as we neared it, Jimmy stepped out of the dark hole and smiled at me.

"Welcome, Child Daniel." He greeted. "I trust your physical state is, as the outsiders say, 'in working order?' "

"Yeah," I managed to get out. "I'm getting better."

"That is very good to hear," he smiled. "You are a very lucky son." Turning out to the people in the courtyard, some of whom had congregated at the bottom of the water tower, he raised his hand towards the hole he had come out of. Instantly, a bell rang out. It was loud and echoed inside the tank, coming out directly into my ears. Once it had sounded twenty one times, it and the crowd fell silent, and Saint Jimmy yelled one reverberating word.

"Loquor!" It was Latin. He continued. "Children of the Lost and Found! On this very Sabbath morning, a tragedy occurred. On the River Connecticut, lives were lost once again to the Great Bare Tortoise. The vessel by which they traveled was chosen for destruction, just as all of our lives are chosen in the very same way. The lives of the entire band of passengers were taken swiftly away; all except one. The one soul that the Great Bare Tortoise has ever spared, and whose body has drifted to us in those moments of desperation."

A murmur went through the crowd before Jimmy continued. Apparently the Montauk had never let a meal go to waste. "Surely fate has smiled upon this dear boy today. Surely he is meant to carry on, to complete his life mission. Surely, he was meant to come here. This is fate's will; this is the destiny laid out for him. Now we must act upon this destiny, and help him carry on."

He turned to me "This may very well be the dawning of the rest of your life." And back to his people. "His name is Daniel. He is but a boy. But he is here with us, and that is all that matters, for that is fate's will."

He grabbed me gently by the shoulder and propped me in front of him. I admit that I was anxious. For one, I had no idea what going on, or when I would be able to return home. But there in front of over a hundred people, I felt big as they kneeled on one knee and recited some verse.

"We are the waiting. The waiting unknown. Amen."

Jimmy shouted, "Can I get another Amen?"

"Amen!"

Author's notes:

- I understand that lockjaw is a permanent disability. I used the word for lack of a better one.

- The Pip-Boy 5000 is broken... probably forever.

- The Volume is not an actual book in existence, but is related to the Bible. I wrote all the passages.