Chapter 2
The Tunnel
A week passed since he'd left that last stretch of road in favour of crossing the wastes the old fashioned way. He didn't feel nervous about losing his way out here without a path to follow, as he had done it many times in the past. The easy-living folks in towns sometimes asked him how he lived out here, in the heat and sand. Just a natural drifter, he would say.
His companion continued to follow him, to his surprise. Though lately it seemed to be filled with less and less energy than it had when he first met it. It all came down to the rationing he was making to their meals every night. The deathclaw had only brought him one small rat for dinner last night, and nothing the night before. He cursed himself for having relying too much on it to bring back meals. His stomach complained most nights too, making sleeping hard to do.
He felt that sense of hopelessness creep into his thoughts, as it often does on long trips without people to talk to. He was never one for the big crowds, but was never comfortable out here on his own either. He had the one thing on his mind, the New Vegas dream, and of all the talking he'd overhead, of all the bits of information he'd put together, he knew this would be different. Or maybe this was just his mind reaching out for this last chance for purpose, as he clearly had nowhere else to go. Maybe Vegas wasn't as good as his mind told him. But he was on the way now, and there was nothing left to turn back to.
The going was slow and uneventful, but there was a few things he'd begun to notice that made travelling a little less dull, and he'd come up with just about anything to get his mind off the thoughts of food and water. Usually, he'd find shade during the peak hours of the day, and wait for that great sun to pass though its skyward travel. But lately he found it wasn't really hot on his skin, even a little bit cool. Again those talks of a 'nuclear winter' came to him, and a little part of him was grateful for the coming drop in temperature.
Concerning his new friend, he'd see an intelligence in its face whenever he made idle comments to himself, or at nights when he muttered the lyrics to those silly childhood songs he and his family used to sing together. A spark of recognition in those reptilian eyes every now and then. It would peer up at him from its position on the ground, look into his own eyes the same way a human would, like it was asking him a wordless question. He felt a little scared at the implication – that the Mentats, which it gobbled up greedily – was actually doing something to it. Whatever 'it' was, he was unsure he wanted to know.
The way ahead became a constant uphill journey. The deathclaw didn't drink much, so he kept himself hydrated. There were no other features out here, save for the mountains on the horizon, and he kept them to his left as he walked. His water supply became lighter and lighter and the hill never evened out. Twice he found his knees weakening, once even bringing him close to collapsing. The deathclaw helped him along, nudging at his thigh with one of its horns, and in its eyes he could clearly see a spark of encouragement. Just a little farther, he thought it would say, but those were just tricks his mind was playing on him.
It wasn't until he started thinking about resting when he finally saw details in the land ahead, and they weren't dunes or mountains, at last. The land dipped out of view and into the earth, couldn't be a mile or two away. He pushed himself towards the feature, collapsing once along the way, until at last he came to a stop. He was stood at the lip of a huge divot, which slid down and away from him like a giant bowl. Ahead of that, the path narrowed, where it winded its way further until out of sight, like a giant snakeskin buried in the earth.
The canyon looked clear and filled with plant life. The thought of critters hiding down there brought some promise he couldn't waste. He examined the slope leading down there for a moment. Looked shallow enough to be safely scaled.
"See you on the other side," he said, and jumped. The last thing he saw was the deathclaw raising one surprised eye at him (like a human's, he thought again) and then he went skidding down the slope on his knees, arms to his sides to keep himself balanced. He had done something like before, years ago when he lived in Seattle with his brother and sister. How long ago had that been, sliding down hills on pre-war sleds? Fifteen years now?
He came to a rest at the bottom, wiping away at his knees and legs to shake off the dust. He looked up at the slope, seeing the tracks his body made in the dirt. At the lip of the canyon he could see the deathclaw peering down at him. Then after a moment it did its best to copy him, and seeing it try and dig its claws into the ground to keep itself upright was a humorous sight for him. At least it was, until it rammed straight into him at full force, knocking the wind out of him.
He crossed his arms over his belly where it had gotten him. When he regained his breath he scolded at his companion, but didn't really seem fazed, but rather amused at what it had done. Given how it gave one snort in his direction before moving off and investigating a nearby shrub with green berry's growing on its stalks.
After a while they got going again, winding their way through the earth, but shaded and surrounded by flora. Plenty of the wild plants around them were edible, and he guessed the place would be teeming with wildlife, but even after the few hours travelling though, they saw nothing so much as an insect, and even the still air down here was only filled by the grunts of the deathclaw, and his boots on the gravel. It had been quiet up there on the surface, but nothing like this.
The sun had gone out of sight and the sky was gold in the dusk. Even now the temperature was low enough to make his teeth clatter, but he pressed onward. He couldn't see the sun out of the canyon, but there was enough light to make out the silhouette of a building up ahead. His companion charged ahead of him as soon as it saw it, and he followed it.
Around the building a concrete ramp led up to a platform that was built a few feet above the ground. He walked up and examined the building on his right. Maybe once it had been two stories high, but all that was left behind a booth, which seemed to be the only thing still standing. Surrounding it was piles of splintered wood and rubble. Bits of hanging metal creaked and groaned at his passing.
He circled the ruins, checking over to see if there was anything left worth noting, but found himself back on the concrete platform empty handed. There was a thick yellow line running parallel to the edge of the platform, and he followed it with his eyes all the way to the far side, where he spied the deathclaw hunkered underneath something.
He went over and joined it. The thing it was staring at was something like a map, only he could see no roads or towns, only lines. Each one a different colour, with the legend in the top corner labelling them different things he didn't really understand. He studied the map until he narrowed down his own location, which was a little off the centre, and a bit further up the right. A thin purple line ran right though this place, which was labelled Deposit Station in big letters, and then it spun south where it forked into two directions – one left one right.
The right one went off deeper into the canyons, while the left one seemed to leave all together through a long black detail, where it ended abruptly to a place labelled Receiving Area. Judging from the distance the map legend gave, it seemed only just round the corner from here.
"That's our way forward, I'm betting," he said. And then he heard something to his right, in the rubble. The deathclaw heard it too, as it growled in that direction. When he looked he saw nothing, but that didn't help. He thought about getting out his rifle, but after a long couple moments of staring, all was silent. He shrugged.
"Let's go," he said, and he realised he'd been whispering, and one hand was already on the butt of his gun. They moved off, him glancing back every few moments to see anything in the growing darkness. He didn't. And they rounded the next corner and left the station behind.
The pass ahead bended towards the right, just as it did on the map. He hugged the canyon wall, keeping an eye on the open ground, wary that he wasn't alone. After a few minutes the pass split, and there, dug into the rock face in a giant black O, was the tunnel he would cross.
He moved a few feet in, where the natural light stopped and he couldn't see very far ahead. He thought about the mine and its occupants he'd cleared out, and wandered if this would be the same. He wasn't exactly prepared to hunt down any more packs of beasts for a good while.
Something underneath his foot didn't quite match the telltale gravel he'd been crossing these last few weeks. He cleared away at the ground with his boot, and uncovered a gleaming bit of silver. He got to his knees and patted away the dust for a few minutes, interested. He'd seen train stations before in the big pre-war cities, and those big train cars that carried hundreds of people at impossible distances, tipped over and broken. But these tracks looked old and crude, like they were made not too long ago. By raiders or other folk, though he hadn't seen raiders organised enough to pull off construction like this.
Another noise, heavy and crunching the gravel, behind and to the left of him. The first stars were peering out in the sky and the last rays of sun were vanishing now. He turned his flashlight on and scanned around. He noticed his companion do so as well, its eyes moving side to side before fixing on a point. Like a sniper, he thought.
But the deathclaw didn't give off any signs it spotted anything, and a chill ran down his spine at the thought of camping out in the open. It was either that or into the tunnel, and he chose the latter. Sooner he got out and back into the wastes, the better. Funny how he at first thought this place prosperous, and now he wanted nothing more than to get out.
He walked into the darkness, deathclaw at his heel. He looked back every few minutes to see the tunnel mouth shrink and shrink until he couldn't see it anymore. They made camp late into the night, with no fire and cold leftovers, backs on the rail tracks. At least he had no dreams.
2
Up above ground in those long stretches of desert, he had lost his sense of time to some degree, but down in this tunnel that seemingly had no end, it was gone completely. Could've been a day or two, or could've been for weeks, but in that darkness it was impossible to tell. He felt his way through, using the tracks and the walls to guide their way to the other side. They slept very little and ate just as less. His companion grumbled often, probably at its lack of food, and he could see the hunger in its eyes, burning like two hovering orbs in the dark by his side. Something else in them, though, he just couldn't place what.
At one point, they came across a pair of metal carriages. One of them had tipped off the tracks, lying on its side. The other was covered in grime and rust, but stood firmly upright. He went and stood at the back of the standing carriage, where an ancient door still hung on its hinges, slightly ajar.
He pulled the door out towards him slowly. The old metal whined and it echoed throughout the quiet tunnel. Dozens of bugs crept out of the eaves of the carriage as he passed the torchlight around the interior. At the front of the carriage he could see a control panel spanning the length of the cart, with a seat on the left side with an old joystick in front of it. Eight windows, four on each side, were cracked and destroyed. He could see the fragments of glass on the ground, both inside and out.
He lifted a leg onto the carriage, where the step came up to about his waist. The whole thing tipped a little backwards, compensating for his weight. The ground looked so rotten he feared he might fall through, but the metal held.
A heavy coppery stench filled his nose as he made his way to the panels. Something scratched at the rocks to his left outside the carriage, and he guessed the deathclaw was picking over at something. Regardless, he put his attention to the controls, and was surprised to find some of the lit up with tiny green circles. Two faintly glowing screens were on the dash left of the seat, which he presumed must have belonged to the driver. Rows of buttons ran alongside the screens, there labels faded too much for him to read. Save for one, which was labelled auto.
He pressed it, but saw no immediate reaction. He did the same for almost every other button and still nothing. Whatever hopes he had that something might have happened vanished. He called out to the deathclaw and, although only in a whisper, his words echoed out the tunnel and made him flinch. He hadn't heard himself speak for what felt like forever ago.
What happened next was very sudden, spanning only a few seconds. Dozens of fluorescent lights, hidden in the corners of the carriage ceiling, came to life with a click and blinded his sensitive eyes. Then a voice of a women spoke up out of somewhere in a metallic voice.
"Welcome aboard the Line 5 train. Resume trip?"
Outside the train car came noises. Louder than one youthful deathclaw could make. He moved over and peered outside one of the broken windows, gloved hands planted on the frames. There it was, his companion, surrounded by things sliding across the tracks. The ones with enough limbs to stand stood with shoulders hunched all the way to the backs of their sloppy heads. Each one of them mumbled and gibbered sounds like animals.
One, farthest away from the train, lunged forward with one hand, with nails longer than its fingers, towards the deathclaw with inhuman speed. It tried to dodge to the side but was to slow, and he could see a flash of blood spill from the deathclaw's shoulder. He could hear it groan in pain as well.
His companion quickly recovered, however. It threw itself on the ghoul's back and severed its head clean off in about three seconds. The body slumped to the ground, and the dead rolled along where it rested against the train.
He had just unslung his rifle, ready to cover his friend when he heard something at the end of the train. He looked over, seeing a pair of ghouls clambering up into the carriage. The two husks of men stared up at him with awful, blank eyes like potholes to hell. Swinging his rifle around, he fired one bullet at the one of on the left, hitting it square in the forehead and sending it flying backwards with its arms splayed in a don't-shoot-me pose. The bolt was pulled back and he hit the next one on the chest, where it crumpled forward, half in, half out of the train.
Then the windows began filling up with faces. What ghouls lacked in intelligence, what with them crawling over themselves in attempts to get at him, they made up for in numbers. As he fired away at them, each muzzle flash lighting up the dark tunnel in a split second of blinding light, he wondered how many had they passed, or how long they might have been following behind them, hidden just beyond the reaches of his lights, or his friends senses?
No matter now. He spent twelve shots, missing only once, where the bullet ricochet dangerously around the train before bouncing off down the tunnel behind them. One ghoul got far enough to fall flat on its back once it climbed through a window, shredding its paper-like skin on glass shards. He quickly ran it through with his pocket knife before it could get up. And as he raised the knife out of the skin, the robotic voice spoke again.
"Resume trip?"
"What do you mean, 'resume trip'?" he growled. He looked above him where the source of the voice was loudest. A small slit through the ceiling went up a few feet and stopped. At its end he could see a tiny speaker.
"Last destination was confirmed on 5/3/2281 from Northern Mine Number 2 to Depository Station. Resume trip?"
Only a few months ago, he thought, reloading his rifle. "Can this thing move?"
"Repairs were successful on 15/1/2281 by one 'Jack Miller'. Motor functions satisfactory. Resume trip?"
"Fast as you can, yeah!"
The unseen engine creaked to life, and the wheels underneath slowly began turning. More and more ghouls scrambled around the train, the sickening sound of their feet being squashed by the moving train was very loud. Not that it mattered to the ghouls. Anything but bullets didn't mean nothing to them. A couple hundred thousand doses of radiation does that to people.
"Hey!" he yelled, standing at the lip of the train door, which a ghoul had torn off a few moments ago. "Over here!"
Back near the other, toppled train car, he could still see his friend wrestling with a trio of ghouls, but there were a lot more corpses lying around and it seemed to be holding its own despite its size. Upon hearing his voice call out, its draconic head lifted out of its predatory state and gazed in his direction. It understood the urgency, and jumped up and onto a ghoul and leapt out of the ring the ghouls made around it. It ran on all fours towards the train.
It hopped up onto the train, where he had moved back to give it room. But before it could reach any further the train gave a sudden jerk as it shifted gears and picked up the pace. The deathclaw lost its balance and tumbled to the side. For one moment he thought it would fall, right into that large gathering crowd of ghouls that had been attracted to all the noise. But it managed to hold on with one clawed hand, gripping hard enough into the metal to go right through it.
Then a ghoul, one that was quicker than the rest, staggered forward and clutched onto the left taloned foot of the deathclaw. His companion barked in surprise and pain as it was dragged backwards. He thought the bark sounded like it had said 'help'. And he was later sure that he was correct.
His fist came flying into the ghouls face in an instant. It felt like his hand went through mashed potato. He had no idea how such frail-looking things could possess such strength as they did, but there bones were soft and his fist caved in what little flesh its beef-jerky skin contained. he grabbed one of the horns on the deathclaws back and yanked it backwards, sending it away from the door and safely inside.
The train began speeding up enough to be noticed. The ones that couldn't get grips on the windows began to drag behind, joining that ever-growing crowd that lumbered after the train. The deathclaw tried to help him as he cleared away the windows of ghouls, using his knife as much as he could, but he put a hand up and shook his head. It grumbled but stayed back and he was almost oblivious to the ridiculous reality that he was, in a sense, giving orders to dangerous creature.
With the weight of the ghouls gone, the train seemed able to move quicker, and soon the tracks became blurs underneath them as they sped down the tunnel. After fifteen minutes he could no longer see a single ghoul within arms-reach of the train, but he could still hear them, sprinting after them using that endless stamina every ghoul he'd seen in the past have.
What would have taken a few more days to travel on foot went by within the next few minutes. He had just about taken comfort on the cold floor, ready to get what little rest his body could get, when the train warned him of an obstacle ahead on the tracks and encouraged him to order the train to slow. He did, walking and looking out through the long stretch of black that was the tunnel. Only difference now, he was glad to see, was that there was a light at the end, coming up fast.
Bu the light was small, smaller than the other side, and he looked at the giant pile of rubble blocking the way out uneasily. Had he just come through this whole tunnel just to be turned back? Maybe the train could reverse and-
There was a gap, not big, but a passage between the rubble and the right tunnel wall. Rays of light shone through there, orange and bright. Behind them, closing in fast now that they had slowed. were ghouls and death, and it was a chance he was going to take.
When the train came to a halt, which took longer than he'd hoped, given how much room the train needed to brake so it wouldn't hit the rubble, he bolted off of it and straight to the gap. The mechanical trains voice bid him farewell but he didn't listen. The space between the rubble looked barely wide enough to cross.
By his side the deathclaw went to all fours, like a cat ready to pounce. The ghouls couldn't be seen, yet. But he could hear them. There had to be hundreds of them coming at them from the darkness.
He looked to the left wall and noticed something. A doorframe built into the tunnel right by the stopped train. In it he could see the faint glow of radiation, and a whole swarm of humanoid silhouettes. The door was labelled EMERGENCY ACCESS in red letters, but it was ajar, and more and more ghouls came staggering out into the open. He had never seen so many gathered in one place before.
"You first," he said, and forced the deathclaw through the gap. When it noticed the light it turned tale and used its small body to weave out and into the outside world, where it disappeared from view. He turned sideways, back against the concrete wall, and shimmied into the gap after it.
One freakish hand settled on the nook between his shoulder and neck and squeezed, long nails digging into his exposed flesh there and drawing blood. He cried out, first striking out with his hand in a panic, then with his knife, severing the entire arm in an upward slash. Easy enough since their bones had rotted away along with their sense.
He shimmied a few more inches along, sheathing his knife and holding the flow of blood coming from his wound. A dozen arms reached out to him, clawing and tearing away at each other, but he was beyond their reach, and he could feel a breeze ruffle his hair.
He went faster, sliding along the wall like an insect until the light blinded his eyes that were now too used to the dark. Out in the open he felt he could finally breathe again, and the telltale smell of dust and sand filled his nose and it was very comforting. There at his feet the deathclaw was taking a rest, curled up in a ball, and he saw plenty of marks on its back. He sat down and crossed his legs, listening to the wind and the growls of the ghouls trapped in the tunnel behind him, and for the first time today noticed that, although the sun was high above them, it was dreadfully cold.
