"Have you ever seen two ghouls having sex?" ask Rose. Jenkins recoiled in horror.
"Holy Christ Rose I'm trying to cook!" He worked the skillet over top of the camp fire, trying not to set the Brahmin meat ablaze like he did last week. The fats from the two headed beasts caught fire rather easily.
"Yeah. I know." Rasped Rose picking at another piece of rotting flesh on her face. She stuck a corpse like finger into the place where her nose used to be and scraped out the remains of a fly, then continued. "It's kinda like watching two half chewed pieces of jerky rub together. Or maybe something worse if they've been rotting long enough."
Jenkins used his free hand to wipe the sweat from his balding head. The heat from the fire was making him warmer than he thought. He shot Rose a look.
"Would you please shut up about this."
"Look all I'm saying is that I haven't been laid in a long time." With that she lay back against the boulder behind her soaking up the heat from the flames.
"Well looky here. We'll check out this vault tomorrow, and if all goes as planned, you can club whatever rotten corpse will take you, drag them back here to your love shack, and decay the days away if that's your wish." Rose shifted against the boulder, listening to Jenkins prattle on. "Personally I just want a spot to hide from these damn raiders that we keep running into. With all these jerks we keep finding, you would think that they think, that we think we've got caps lining our pockets. I swear…" Which Rose knew that Jenkins often did.
"Alright then. Tomorrow I get a love nest to help make some ghoul boy happy, and you get a hidey hole to stock full of booze away from the degenerates of society. Now how about dinner?"
Paradise Lost and Found
The screeching of metal on metal sounded loud in the vault tunnel, the vibrations shaking dust loose anew, as the sparks falling from the old mechanism illuminated the entryway with their brief light. A light flickered to life on the far wall revealing trash and ruin throughout the room.
"Looks promising." observed Rose strolling in.
"Hey wait a sec!" hissed Jenkins, ducking down behind the edge of the raised platform so as to look about behind cover. The very image of a victim as far as Rose was concerned. "You don't know if there's anyone in here." Rose looked at him and unslung her sub-machinegun, checking to make sure it was loaded.
"HEY! ANYONE HOME?" She yelled. It was like hearing a giant piece of paper tear as her dry tones echoed through the cavernous vault. Jenkins cringed, gritting his teeth he was sure the sound of them breaking was echoing too. Rose cocked an ear, listening to nothing but the gentle hum of the reactor somewhere below them, and the creaking of a broken fan feeding the control room off to one side. She shrugged. "No one home I guess."
"You're an asshole." Said Jenkins pushing past her, still hunched over a little bit. He walked up to the platform and started opening some lockers lined up against the wall. Rose went into the control room, finding a computer left on, its monochrome screen casting a faded glow. Seeing that it was unlocked she began perusing the entries left by the inhabitants.
"Hey. Looks like this was another one of those Vault-Tec experiments." She scrolled through the correspondence. "Really?" was all she said as Jenkins sidled up to her.
"What?"
"Looks like they were conducting a social experiment using Nuka Cola." She scrolled more. "The vault got split into gangs. One side was pushing for Nuka Cola Classic, while the other was out for Nuka Cola Quantum."
"I hate these social experiments." Jenkins looked back out into the other room, making sure no one was sneaking up on them. Rose couldn't care less. Then she giggled as mirthful ghouls are want to do. Jenkins raised an eyebrow.
"Nuka-Cola started turning everyone into ghouls."
"Swell." Replied Jenkins rolling his eyes.
"I knew that shit was bad for you smoothskins." She scrolled through another few messages. "The reactor is leaking apparently."
"Well I've got some Rad-X somewhere in my jacket here." He patted everywhere for one of the small vials, coming up short. Rose tossed him one she had stashed away.
"Not like it's going to kill me more than it already has."
The rooms on the upper floor were mostly just basic administrative offices, a couple of labs, and a conference room. A couple of the rooms were barricaded, keeping whatever treasures that lay beyond safe for the moment. They descended a staircase that led to an atrium which overlooked a common area just below. Testing the rail Jenkins leaned on it a little bit, and peered into the dark below while Rose checked out another line of lockers.
"Hey look! I found one of those Nuka-Cola trucks." She held it over her head for Jenkins to see without turning around. Jenkins had a more pressing problem. Below them, skittering about in the dim lighting, were dozens of radroaches. Jenkins backed up so fast he knocked his head against the locker, and his teeth started chattering. Rose looked at him and sighed. "How many?" He couldn't even vocalize the number of the vicious little bugs. Rose looked over the rail, and hefted the toy truck at one, hearing the satisfied crunching sound of a carapace breached. It always amazed her that Jenkins was afraid of the little bastards. She could remember him save her from a Deathclaw, with this huge rifle he used to have, and then blowing up another with a fist full of grenades. That was how they met. As romantic high explosives and vicious man eating beasts, their love never blossomed. Mostly because half her face was rotting away, and she carried about her this funk which he remarked one time was like "cheese left in a fridge that had been unplugged for a month during summer". Nonetheless they stayed together for companionship, which sometimes she wasn't sure why. Especially since he was terrified of one of the most numerous creatures in the wasteland. Spying the staircase to the floor below, she decided to clear up the problem so her friend could at least be useful again.
"Stay here." Was all she said, putting her firearm away, and taking out her combat knife. Jenkins slid down the wall, and held his little sawed off double barrel in front of him like a some sort of wicked religious symbol. Below he heard her jump off the metal staircase and run into the room. The cracking and squishing sounds were horrendous.
"Ow! You little!" yelled Rose. Jenkins almost plugged his ears, and should have had he known she was going to shoot up the room. The rattling of her submachinegun echoed throughout the whole atrium, deafening him. After a moment, the noise had ceased, and he could hear her over the new ringing in his ears. "All clear."
Jenkins got up and descended the stairs, suddenly coming into brighter light as Rose had found the switch. Glowing incandescence revealed the insectoid carnage that she left behind. With shaking hands as he entered he pointed his shotgun all around, looking for the slightest movement.
"D-did you g-get them all?" he asked stuttering with fear.
"Yeah. One decided to take a bite. Nothing like dead flesh to satisfy, but damn it hurt." She started wrapping up a small bite on her leg with a rag from her pocket. Several rooms were off this one, but none hand anything useful. Another door lead to another staircase, leading to another level. The sign above, caked in dust and grim, said 'quarters'.
Jenkins lead the way, wanting to get away from anything reminding him of radroaches. On the level below, a smell permeated the air, worse than the usual stench of decay. Jenkins recognized it immediately.
"Ghouls." He whispered.
"I'm a ghoul dumbass." Said Rose shooting him an annoyed look.
"No!" he hissed back, trying to shush her, and pointing.
"What? There?" she said pointing at an open doorway. Jenkins covered his face, and moved to enter the room off the hall. Rose sighed watching him get ready, his shotgun up to blow the first person he saw in half. He entered trying to scan the room, but was then falling as the floor had a hole in it covered by a carpet. Two ghouls were at the far end of the room, looking at each other over lamp light. They saw Jenkins enter and sink up to waist.
"Shit!" he yelled squirming in the hole as the two ghouls made a gasping sound, getting ready to charge. He rocked himself into a position to point his shotgun awkwardly, and pulled the trigger catching one ghoul at the waist. It folded in two as the slugs ripped through its rotting body, and slumped to the floor complete with a squishing noise. Rose entered and stood over top of Jenkins, firing at the second one, her bullets perforating the pseudo undead chest. With no heart left to pump blood the second ghoul seemed to fold in on itself, as its chest cavity collapsed, and fell atop the other. Rose was holstering her gun, when Jenkins started squaking. "Shit! Something is under here!" he yelled. He kicked and squirmed more, as Rose knelt down and put an arm under his shoulder, lifting hard. His clothes tore slightly against the ragged metal of the hole, but he eventually worked his up out with her assistance. She lay back against the door frame, as he panted for breath laying on his back. Rolling over he looked in the hole. Below were a few ghouls staring up at him, hissing with rage, and leaping towards the hole, trying to grab Jenkins. Laying on his belly, he pulled a grenade from his pocket, trying to ignore the stench of rotting flesh being pushed up through the hole. "I hate this place." He said pulling the pin, and dropping the bomb into the hole. He rolled over hearing more hissing from below, and began reloading his sawed off gingerly. "Like really hate it."
The floor heaved very slightly as the grenade exploded, kicking up a plume of dust, and the new smell of burnt rotten things. Rose snickered.
"You might have just killed my future husband."
They searched the rest of the quarters finding a ready supply of ammunition in one bedroom much to their surprise. Most of it was useable which gave the two of them hope of cleaning out the place. They descended into the Engineering layer, hearing the reactor malfunctioning down a side hallway. Jenkins became rather concerned as it was unusual to hear such noises from such a sophisticated piece of hardware. He voiced his reservations about cleaning the vault out to stay in, as it was likely uninhabitable in any regard. Rose waved him off.
"We can fix it." She said blithely, looking in a workbench drawer.
"We don't know anything about fixing an atomic pile!" exclaimed Jenkins, annoyed.
"Ok. Ok. You can fix it."
"Did you not hear what I just said?" Rose picked up a book from the drawer, and placed it on the table. Jenkins picked a piece of scrap metal from off a shelf, and looked at it, promptly dropping it with a satisfying banging, before continuing on. "I couldn't tell you the first thing of OH MY GOD!" His shout made Rose whirl around. A rather large and imposing Mirelurk had wandered into the room, it's pasty pale carapace the brightest thing in the dull light. It chittered a little and wobbled, trying to look at both Rose and Jenkins. Rose made a motion toward picking her submachinegun off her hip, which caused the Mirelurk to choose her. The claws of the beast stretched out as it ran towards her. From one side Jenkins gave it both barrels, as the shotgun blast reverberated in the cavernous expanse of the nearly empty vault. He reloaded quickly as Rose hammered the ugly aquatic crustacean with 10mm rounds. The natural armour of the creature seemed to shrug of the hits, as it kept moving forward, swinging one of its deadly sharp claws at the ghoul girl. She stepped back bumping into the workbench, and rasped a yelp out.
"Shit!" was all she had time to say. The Mirelurk pulled a claw back to try and stick her with it, when Jenkins stepped up from its blind side, stuck the barrel of the sawed off in its feeler filled mouth, and pulled the trigger. Goo and inside pieces exploded from the top of its shell, and its sudden demise brought all of its weight down on to the shotgun, tearing it from Jenkins hand and imbedding it further into the fresh carcass. Rose stood there panting with fear, reloading her submachinegun with shaking hands. "Thanks fellah."
"Don't mention it." Said Jenkins grimacing as he dislodged the weapon from the dead Mirelurk. "I mean ever." He looked about for a rag, but unsatisfied he resorted to wiping the barrel of his gun off on to his pant leg, trying not to breath in the nauseating smell of fishy innards. Jenkins looked at the smeared guts on his leg a sighed. "Hope that's the last we see of them."