12 December, 143 days to go

The desert stretches on forever, it seems, with the sun blazing down at you out of the sky until you wonder how your ancestors ever could have lived Outside. I mean, the old records all say that they did, bit how they ever ventured out of their safe sheltered Vaults to do whatever they had to do out here is beyond me. Certainly, no sane person could want to live like this. I had a real scare last night. Travel in the cool of the evening seemed a better bet than braving that blistering sun, and I was making good progress, too, until the... the thing appeared out of nowhere. I've studied books about life on the Outside, of course, as part of my preparation. This thing looked like a scorpion... except for the size. God, except for the size! If someone had described that black, armor-plated monster to me last week, I would have said she was nuts, or brain-jittered from IQ boosterdrug withdrawal. The thing has to be five meters long, with another couple of meters in that tail with its deadly, poison sting curled high over the back. I didn't think creatures with an exoskeleton could grow that big, and I suspect that there must have been some really radical mutations to allow that kind of growth. It skittered toward me on clicking, jointed legs, with great, black claws waving in front of its face, each almost half as long as I am. I suppose Max Stone or Arnie or one of other warrior-types back in the Vault could have stood toe-to-toe with that monster and dispatched it with a few well-aimed shots, but I elected to choose the better part of valor. I mean, the Vault is counting on me to find thatwater purifier chip, and I'm not going to be able to help them if I'm reduced to a pile of scorpion-gnawed bones in the sand. I ran... and I used every stealth trick I've been taught to blend in with my background and slip away. The monsters let me go. Maybe they figured there wasn't enough meat on my carcass to be worth the effort of a chase. I'll never know. What I do know is that this is a terrifying world out here, one that's gone through a lot of changes in the past eighty years. My survival[md]and with it, the survival of my Vault —— hangs on the slenderest of threads.

Day 10

14 December, 141 days to go

Today I reached Vault 15, the vault nearest to my own, and the place the Overseer suggested would be a good place to start my search. The place was completely buried; I found a kind of sewer hole with a ladder inside a corrugated tin shack in the desert that led to a cavern, and not far from the ladder was the vault. I didn't find much... unless you count the infestation of mutated rats and... other, more disturbing creatures. There's one thing about half as big as I am that looks like a hideous combination of rat and mole, but far bigger than either of those creatures. It was waiting for me inside the smashed-open airlock when I stepped through, and its bite was savage and painful. I pumped four rounds into the thing before it stopped trying to reach me, and two more bullets did a number on the wall somewhere in the darkness. I killed it, though, before it killed me. Despite the wound, the knowledge that I could deal with a monster like that mole-rat helped me pull my head together and keep going. I used one of my stimpaks to help the healing along. The vault was a total wash-out, though. The outer door was broken off and lying on the cavern floor. It looked like this place was abandoned a long, long time ago. All the supplies were gone, and the dust and spider webs and rubble suggested that no one has been in here for many, many years. No water purifier chip, either. All the computers are long dead, and the water pumps are buried under debris from and old cave-in. I searched as long as I could, tiptoeing cautiously past mutant rats and a few close kin to the mole-rat thing that jumped me in the airlock. Well, Tanya, you didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you? One thing. On my way here through the desert the other day, I thought I noticed something off in the distance, just south of my line of march and about halfway back to Vault 13. I couldn't see much detail, but it looked like buildings, and there might have been some smoke rising from the place. Smoke could mean cook fires, and people. I think I'll try to reach the place on my way back to the Vault. It's all I have to go on now.

Day 14