Ash Breathers
A Fallout Fan Fiction Story
Written by Jesse Carrigan in collaboration with Sora (ChatGPT, OpenAI)
> Not all who rot are lost. Not all who survive are spared.
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Location: Northwest Capital Wasteland
Year: 2280
Status: Outside Vault Territory
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The wind rolled over the crumbled remains of a pre-War highway, carrying with it the scent of scorched rubber, wet rust, and ash—the permanent perfume of the surface world. Most of the road signs were skeletal. One still clung to its rusted bolts, half-buried in ivy:
"Welcome to Clarksburg – Population 18,224."
A lie, long faded.
Emmett had never been in a Vault. His parents were farmers—or the closest thing the post-war world could offer. Dirt-scratchers. Their land sat between two ridges that barely shielded them from the irradiated sky. No purified water. No Brotherhood patrols. No clean suits or pip-boys. Just a shack, a few brahmin, and a rain barrel covered in mold.
He was sixteen when the cloud took them.
The sky had gone green. No boom. Just light, wind, and silence. His parents coughed up blood and bile for four days. He never got sick. Not like that.
Now he was twenty-eight, and he hadn’t aged a day since.
His skin? Charred, flaking, like dried tree bark in winter. His voice rasped like broken speakers. He hadn’t felt hungry in weeks, maybe months. When he slept—if he slept—he barely dreamed.
They called people like him ghouls.
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He crouched behind the husk of a rusted out truck, watching smoke rise in the valley below. Another camp. Fires meant warmth—or fools.
Through the cracked scope of a pre-War hunting rifle, he spotted a group of survivors. Not Raiders. Too organized. Armor mismatched, but clean. Brotherhood? No, not armored enough.
A caravan.
Emmett’s stomach didn’t growl, but his instincts still kicked in. Food, ammo, salvage. Trade or take. It didn’t matter. Most of them wouldn’t trade with a ghoul anyway.
He rose, checked the bolt on his rifle, and began the slow descent.
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The camp sat beside the broken shell of a Red Rocket gas station. They’d set up turrets—makeshift, auto-targeting, motion sensitive. Scavved tech. Probably powered by a fusion cell jury-rigged into the station’s fuel pump.
He stepped into view.
Instantly, the turrets whirred and locked onto him.
click click click
“Whoa! Hold it right there, zombie!”
The voice came from a woman wearing leather armor and a neon orange scarf wrapped around her head. She held a plasma pistol but didn’t raise it. Yet.
“I’m not feral,” Emmett croaked, slowly lowering his rifle to the cracked asphalt. “Not here to cause trouble.”
They stared. He looked like trouble. Skin peeled at the jawline. No lips to speak of. Yellow eyes.
But he didn’t lunge. Didn’t howl.
A younger guy stepped forward, shotgun ready.
“I’ve seen ghouls before. Even the smart ones go bad eventually.”
Emmett tilted his head. “Then maybe I’ll take you with me when I do.”
The guy didn't laugh.
The woman, though, narrowed her eyes and waved a hand to lower weapons. “We don’t see many breathers like you out this far. You from Tenpenny Tower?”
He shook his head. “No. Grew up south of here. Never made it into a Vault. Got lucky, I guess.”
“That’s what you call lucky?” the guy muttered.
“Better than dead.”
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An hour passed. They let him sit by the fire, separate from the rest but close enough to talk. Her name was Lacy. Leader of the caravan. Her crew had just returned from Rivet City, hauling meds and scrap. She offered stale mutfruit and a bottle of water—real water, clear and not glowing.
“I can’t pay you for it,” Emmett said, setting the bottle down untouched.
“Didn’t ask you to.” Lacy studied him. “You military?”
“Used to be.” He pointed to a frayed patch on his jacket—barely legible, but still visible: U.S. Army.
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“You in the Anchorage campaign?”
He smirked. “You think I’m that old?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe. I heard there’s a ghoul in the Mojave that was around before the bombs even fell.”
“Yeah, well,” Emmett said, “I heard there's a deathclaw in the Commonwealth that wears power armor and runs a bar. Doesn’t mean it’s true.”
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That night, Emmett woke to the smell of blood.
Not his.
The camp was in chaos. One of the guards had vanished. The turret nearest the highway was offline. And the youngest—some teen tagging along with the crew—was screaming behind the Red Rocket station.
Emmett moved fast.
Behind the building, near the coolant tanks, the boy was cornered by something that used to be human—but wasn’t anymore.
Its skin sloughed off in chunks. Black eyes. Its jaw unhinged. A feral ghoul.
Emmett didn’t hesitate. He slammed into the creature from the side, tackling it into the wall. Its claws raked his arm, but he barely felt it.
He reached for his sidearm, pulled the trigger once—pop—a .32 slug tore through the feral’s temple. It dropped twitching.
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The kid scrambled away, crying. Emmett sat against the wall, holding his bleeding arm. It smelled like copper and rot.
Lacy arrived with her plasma pistol raised. Her eyes went wide when she saw the body. And the blood. And Emmett.
“You saved him,” she said.
Emmett looked up. “I think it followed me. Picked up my scent. Maybe it thought I was one of them. Or... maybe I was.”
She knelt, hand on his shoulder. “You’re not feral.”
“Not yet,” he whispered.
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The Next Morning
They buried the feral in a ditch and burned the body.
Emmett stood at the edge of the road, rifle slung over his back. Lacy approached quietly.
“You heading out?”
He nodded. “I don’t want to bring more down on you.”
“We can spare a few rounds, some rad-x. You’ve got a good shot. You could come with us.”
He stared at the horizon. It shimmered with heat, even through the haze of the wasteland.
“I’ve seen too much. And if I turn someday, I’d rather be out there, far from anyone who’d hesitate to pull the trigger.”
Lacy didn’t argue.
She held out a pre-War dog tag. “This belonged to my dad. He didn’t survive the bombs. But he used to say this world didn’t end. It just got harder to love.”
Emmett accepted it.
She didn’t hug him. He didn’t expect her to.
He turned and walked north, into the gray.
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He didn’t know if the feral was drawn to him by scent, memory, or some leftover ghost of who they once were.
But he did know this:
Some of them made it.
People who weren’t in Vaults.
People who didn’t get help from steel-armored soldiers or government shelters.
They burned. They broke.
And they kept going anyway.
Even when the world didn’t want them.
Even when it called them monsters.
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⚙️ AI Collaboration Statement
This story was written by Jesse Carrigan in collaboration with Sora, an AI User Created muse powered by ChatGPT (OpenAI). The Fallout universe and all related elements are the property of Bethesda Softworks. This fan fiction is a non-commercial tribute to the world, themes, and storytelling legacy of Fallout.
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