A hand shook Claire's shoulder. Without opening her eyes, she could tell that it was still dark outside.

"Let me sleep." She mumbled, throwing a blanket over her head.

"No." The stern voice of her companion, Jimmy, refused.

"What time is it?" There was a brief silence in which Claire could only assume Jimmy was looking at his watch.

"Four-thirty."

"What? I don't get up that early. We didn't get to sleep until late." Jimmy sighed, and pulled the sheet off of her face.

"Do you want to get shot by raiders? We have to go by a camp full of them. So, either we can sneak past it under cover of darkness, or we can risk the mercy of her trigger fingers. Your pick." Claire sat up, and she had a very unpleasant look on her face. As she picked up her bedroll, she replied,

"Darkness," almost reluctantly. "Won't it take a while to pack up everything? We did camp out."

"I already packed up. We didn't have a lot of stuff anyways. Just what we were each carrying when I found you." Claire mumbled some obscenities under her breath as she grabbed her bag and started walking. "Hey!" Jimmy yelled after her. "Wait! No doubt you'll get killed if you take fifteen steps away from me." Claire stopped with her back turned to him. "You need to calm down. I know I've learned my lesson."

"And what is that?"

"To not wake you up at four." Claire shrugged, her anger apparently gone.

"Never been a good sleeper."

"Yeah. I'm sure half the wasteland has noticed." Jimmy looked up to the sky, then squinted at his watch. "Come on, we need to go."

Claire and Jimmy virtually tip-toed past the raider camp, as the sun began to rise. The normally loud and violent place was unusually still and quiet, with only the occasional curse and a little bit of gunfire. The raider on watch had fallen asleep, making the passage a bit easier for the two. They walked up an old road, cars two hundred years old still sitting where they had been abandoned during the Great War. While Jimmy simply walked, not minding the uneven terrain, Claire was hopping from one clump of asphalt to the next. He sat down beside the fence that separated them from the raiders, and signaled for Claire to do the same.

"Listen." He barely whispered. She pressed her ear up to the fence.

"Damn, man, you are such a son of a b-"

"Shut up! You're the one who woke me up, you damn idiot. You're lucky I didn't put one of these bullets in you."

"Why don't 'cha?"

"Fine!" There were five gunshots, and then laughter from one of the raiders. Soon, another voice joined in.

"What the hell did you do that for?"

"He woke me up."

"And you shot him?"

"Told me to."

"Why are you up?" A fourth, older voiced yelled. "It is five in the damn morning!" Jimmy snickered. Claire looked at him, confused and horrified.

"What's so funny?" she mouthed.

"Looks like you're not the only one who can't wake up." Claire gently hit his arm.

"Shut up. Let's leave." Jimmy nodded, and they snuck safely out of the raiders' range of hearing. When the group of murderous misfits was far behind them, Jimmy finally burst into laughter, and fell to the ground, clutching his sides as if he was going to explode. "Never gets old!"

"You mean the raiders?" Jimmy nodded. "The ones that rape children and eat people?"

"They're terrible, and kind of a joke. Definitely funny, though. You didn't think that was funny?" Claire stared back at him, appalled. "Oh. Oh, I get it. You're not used to people dying. Rivet City and all. Well, there's bound to be a lot of more dead people on our journey, so either toughen up and get used to it, or learn to navigate with your eyes closed."

"What if I don't want to do either?"

"Then…you are put in a very uncomfortable situation. Death is a natural part of life, Claire. It's like a circle, you see." He made a circular motion with his hands. "Life is one part, death is the other, and they both go around and around. Very natural."

"Except when you die of unnatural causes. Like getting shot five times. Or getting impaled by a…a mole rat. And getting eaten by super mutants. Are those natural?" Claire replied. Jimmy shook his head as a solemn look crossed his face.

"They didn't used to be. But now they are. We can't do anything about it. It's just life." Claire realized that she had struck a chord with Jimmy about his mother, with her comment on the super mutants.

"Sorry." Jimmy stayed silent. "I didn't mean-"

"No. It's alright."

"No, it's not. I'm sorry." Claire stuck her hands in her pockets and stared at the ground sheepishly. Jimmy quickened his pace, and they half-ran-half-walked to an old crumbling building. Jimmy tried to open the rusty doors while Claire sat by a pile of weeds, poking the ground with a stick. The doors were giving him quite an amount of trouble. They refused to open, and Jimmy didn't know if they were locked or rusted shut. If they were locked, he could just shoot the door, but the raiders weren't that far off that they couldn't hear a gunshot. After a few minutes of pulling at the handles, and very heavy cursing, Claire came over to try to help.

She took hold of the handle, pulled as hard as she could, and it came off in her hands. "Shit." She mumbled, and half-heartedly attempted to put it back on the door. "Heh….sorry." Jimmy just stared at the door.

"Maybe there's a back entrance?"

"That puts us at risk."

"This is a Nuka Cola plant, right?" Jimmy nodded. "Break a window, and give me a boost, I'll try to pull you up, or make my way down and open the door for you." He shut his eyes, imagining her plan. It took him a good five minutes, and when he finally opened his eyes, his agreed.

"That's actually a good plan." He found a rock on the ground and broke a second-floor window, the only one that didn't have bars on it. He helped Claire up, and when she held her hand out to help him up, she couldn't reach. "That's fine," Jimmy announced. "Get to the door and unlock it, or shoot it. Raiders wouldn't hear you from inside." Claire nodded, and pretended to salute him.

"I'll see you on the other side, soldier." She said in a deep voice. Jimmy rolled his eyes. He waited outside for a few minutes, keeping watch for animals or Raiders. After ten minutes, he heard some crashing from inside, but shook it off as Claire being clumsy and knocking something over. He walked to the end of the building's side, and saw a scavenger walking down the road.

"Hey!" Jimmy yelled to the scavenger.

"Hey, man, you lookin' to buy something?" She yelled back.

"You got ammo?"

"Yeah, I got ammo." Jimmy handed her twenty caps, and she gave him one box of shotgun shells. "What are you doing hanging around the Nuka Plant?"

"Exactly what I guess you came to do. Scavenging. Good luck though, the door's shut." They walked back to the door for the scavenger to investigate. She took a machete off of her belt and slid it between the doors, dragging it down until it snagged in the middle.

"It's just locked." She declared, and took out a pistol to shoot the lock.

"No!" Jimmy moved her gun away from the door. "There's a camp full of raiders not that far off. We walked past there this morning. They would be able to hear a gunshot. The girl I'm travelling with is inside." Speak of the devil, the two of them heard faint running steps on hard concrete, and then yelling. A muffled,

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" and then a gunshot rang out, and the door swung open. Claire ran out, with a bloody cut on her forehead, and two giant mirelurks chasing after her. "Shoot them!" She yelled to Jimmy. She turned around and ducked as one took a swung at her, then returned with three bullets to its face. The scavenger took the other one down, while Jimmy stood, dumbfounded, as Claire regained her breath. "There…" she panted, "there are a lot of mirelurks in there." As if on cue, another mirelurk ran out, this one even bigger than the other two. Jimmy had composed himself by then, and went in to killer-man mode, as Claire would come to pen it. After the dust had settled, there were five dead mirelurks lying on the ground, and one dead scavenger. "Who's that?" Claire looked at the scavenger, lifting her arm up to see if she was dead. It fell to the ground limply.

"A scavenger. Sold me some ammo." He walked over to her body, and took her pouch of bottle caps off of her belt. Claire looked at him, appalled for the second time that day. "It's not like she's going to need them," he stated innocently. He then proceeded to take her backpack, which held lots of food and some stimpacks. Jimmy also took her 9mm and tucked it behind his belt. "Are there any more mirelurks in there?" He asked Claire, who was sitting on the ground, legs tucked closely to her body.

"Yeah." she replied, "A whole nest. They didn't come after me though." Jimmy looked at the cut on her forehead.

"We're going to need to get you to a medic for that. No problem. I know where they put one supply of Nuka Cola. And, Megaton's just two days away. Actually, everything's going exactly as planned. We probably won't die."

"That's good." Claire replied, lightly touching the cut on her head. "This thing hurts like crap."