CHAPTER FOUR

May 5th 2273

The cupboard was cold, small and cramped. For Milly however, it had also saved her life. When Sarah had shoved her in here, she had told her not to make a sound. To stay inside till it was safe to come out. The big bad people had then fired their loud guns, and she heard them talk. They said bad words before they moved on. Then more came, then more. Finally she stopped hearing them enter. That's when the siren sounded. It wailed loudly, almost deafeningly so. She did as she was told, she stayed hidden in the cupboard. She was ten today, and she was a good girl. She knew she had to stay there till there was no longer any danger, so she stayed. For how long, she didn't know. Milly remained there, hidden and frightened for hours upon hours, not daring to move, until finally dawned on her that nobody was coming to tell her it was safe to come out.

With great courage, Milly pushed the cupboard door open and crawled out. The reactor room was dark, darker than she thought it should be. She felt something cold, soft and wet beneath her hand.

"Ewww!" she said, snatching her hand away. She looked closely, trying to see what it was she had touched in the darkness. She gasp in horror at the realisation that not only was it Sarah, but that she was dead and covered in blood.

Milly put her arms around the body as best she could, given her small frame, and hugged her tightly around the waist. She began to cry uncontrollably. Never before had she seen death, ever seen so much blood. She stayed with Sarah, for how long she didn't know. But eventually her tears began to dry up.

Why hadn't anyone come down here yet? Why hadn't anyone checked in on them?

With great reluctance, she decided to find out. She pushed herself off of Sarah's body, making her way slowly over to the door. Beyond the door, was the stairwell that lead to the maintenance level. With a push of the button, it slid open. Light shone in from the artificial lighting on the ceiling in the stairwell, casting strange shadows into the room.

Slowly, Milly made her way up the stairs. The corridor at the top looked empty, but the room at the end, and to the right had some people in it. She crept down the corridor, peering through the window into the room. She saw strange men and women inside, wearing peculiar blood stained clothes. They were drinking and laughing loudly, not caring that Sarah lay dead in the reactor room.

She moved off down the corridor, in the vain hope that she would see someone she knew. That they were just waiting to rush in to this area of the vault and kick the bad people out.

After moving down about thirty feet, Milly came to a corner where the corridor made a right angle turn. She kept close to the wall, peering around it. On the floor was more blood. Some of it was smeared, as if someone had been dragging something through it.

Today was Milly's birthday. It was supposed to be a fun day. It wasn't, it was horrible. This morning, she was meant to be in school, but Sarah had taken her to see the reactor room instead, as a present. At this moment, it looked like it might be the only gift she would get today.

Reluctantly, Milly continued on, hugging her back against the steel wall. Soon she came to the stairs that lead up to to the hydroponics level. Slowly but surely, she made her way up, until she reached a T-junction.

After looking both ways, not seeing anything but more smeared blood. She decided to go the route that had less blood than the other. Soon however, she came to another corner, where people could be heard talking. She peered around it, looking at two strangers. They wore odd clothing, like the people in the room downstairs had worn.

What they were saying, she couldn't quite make out. From what was audible to her, it was apparent that they had killed everyone.

Milly couldn't hold it in. Her knees buckled as she began to cry, her sobs becoming louder, more uncontrolled.

"What the?" one of the men said, as they both turned to look at the balling child who lay on the floor.

"It's one of the vault kids." the other replied. "Should we end it for her?"

"Nah, let her be. She's got no where to run. I'll tell the others we got a live one. Far too late for her to be any real trouble now."

One of the men began to approach her slowly. Milly looked up and shrieked. She clambered back to her feet and began to ease backwards away from him.

"Look kid." he said to her. "There's no one left but you. No point in fighting. Just accept that everyone you knew is gone, and that we're the only ones you got now."

With a hefty shake of the head she shouted back at him, through sobs of grief. "No!" She turned and ran.

"Fucking hell!" he shouted after her. "Yer gonna get yerself killed kid!"

She no longer cared, she just wanted to be away from here, she wanted her momma and papa, but they were dead. She knew it in her heart that everyone was dead, that no one was left and she was all alone.

Without thought she ran as fast as she could back to the reactor room, where Sarah's body lay. She stared at the body in the darkness for a moment, before she heard shouting from somewhere up the stairs. She ran into the next area of the reactor, to see a gaping hole in the wall. She peered back for a moment, hoping foolishly that through the door, would come her parents to save her. She knew they wouldn't though, they had been murdered like everyone else and she would surely be next.

"No!" she cried, with a fierce determination, that started to well up within her, she decided to leave, to run through the gaping maw, out into the unknown beyond. To where, she had no idea. She didn't know anything any more. All she knew was that she had to get away, to flee far away from here.

The tunnel was almost pitch black, the ground uneven and dangerous. Milly crawled on her hands and knees as the tunnel started to make an shallow incline, trying to rush, but avoid falling also.

Eventually she broke free of the tunnel and out into the dark blue of the very early morning. She shrieked at the vastness of it, at the tiny shining specks in the dark sky, at the towering limbs jutting out of the ground. She almost turned back, but light from torches flickered, and the echoes of shouts reverberated along the tunnel's walls. With a deep breath, she ran out into the night, her legs moving as fast as they could carry her.

Milly tripped on something hard and went sprawling across the dirt. If it wasn't for her thick vault suit, her knees and arms would have been grazed badly by the fall. The darkness surrounded her, as she lay there on the ground. Her eyes grew wet as another torrent of tears flowed freely from them. There was nothing she wanted more than to be back home, with her momma or papa reading her a bedtime story. To have had a brilliant birthday party and to have opened all of her gifts. She looked at her left arm, wishing she had gotten her Pipboy. She would have been awarded it later on at her party, but now she would never get one.

There was a loud snapping sound from somewhere nearby. Milly quickly wiped away the tears and looked around. Without further thought, she jumped back to her feet and began to flee once again. Running as fast as she could go. She looked behind to see if anyone was following her, only to run straight into something cold and hard.

Milly felt arms go around her and she began to panic. She screamed out bellowed for help. She called for her parents, called for her friends help. She clawed and punched at the person who held her, but they only held her tighter, restraining her movements.

"Let me go!" Milly screamed at the person who clutched her.

"It's alright." a woman's voice said to her. "The bad people aren't here."

"No!" the little girl sobbed. "You're lying!"

A bright light shone on them, and the woman let her go, as she turned to face the pursuers. Milly ran away as fast as she could, through the scary dead woodland. each tree looking as though they were ready to reach down and grab her. Behind, the all too familiar sounds of gunfire, echoed terrifyingly through the darkness. Soon though, she found a hollowed out trunk of a fallen tree. She crawled inside, taking refuge, hugging her legs close to her chest, her breathing rapid and laboured.

An eternity seemed to pass, before Milly thought about moving again, but just as she was about to crawl out, two legs appeared at the entrance. She froze, not daring to even breathe.

Moments later the person sat down, legs crossed. In her hand, the woman held a long, dangerous looking gun. Her clothes were thick brown metal, and she was wearing a large backpack. But the thing that struck Milly the most was her face. The woman was almost bald, her face patched with red, sore looking skin, and her eyes had an odd dark ring around them. The woman looked like she was I'll.

"I took care of them." the woman said, her voice soft. "No need to be frightened now."

Milly slinked backwards as far as she could go, before it the trunk got too narrow for her to proceed any further. "Go away!" she shouted.

The woman put the gun to the side. "I'm going to stay here, and we're going to talk."

Milly put her hands over her ears so she couldn't hear. The outsider wasn't going to be able to tell her lies if she couldn't hear them. The woman simply sat there and waited. Before long, Milly's arms got tired, she rested them reluctantly by her side.

"I'm going to start by telling you my name." the woman told her. "It's LeBethany, or just Beth." LeBethany smiled at her. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Not telling!" Milly said adamantly.

"Well, no matter then." the woman said to her. "We'll just have to find something else to talk about."

Milly folded her arms in defiance. Her demeanour of non-compliance was quickly ruined, when her stomach growled loudly. Her hands shot down over it as if to try and keep the sound from escaping. It was too late, however. The woman had clearly heard it.

"Hungry?" LeBethany asked.

"No."

"I heard your stomach calling out for some food."

"It was nothing."

LeBethany took her bag off and placed it in front of her. She opened a zip and pulled out a small box. She held it out to her.

"Don't want it!" Milly said, folding her arms once more.

"It's something I prepared earlier. Not as nice as what you're used too, but it'll keep you from being hungry."

Milly's stomach rumbled again. It had been forever since she had last eaten anything, and she was very hungry. Like a flash she reached forward and grabbed the small container box, opening it to see some odd vile looking fruit and cooked meat inside. She poked at the fruit, half in disgust, half in curiosity.

"It's a fruit that I found growing to the east of here." the woman told her. "It's edible, and not too bad tasting either. I think they might have actually been some kind of grape at one point, though what they are now, I have no idea."

Milly picked it up and took a small bite out of it. The taste wasn't too bad, it was sweet with a bit of an apple taste to it. The texture however, was lumpy and inconsistent, being horribly squelchy with hard and crunchy bits. Too afraid to spit it out, in case the woman took offence, Milly continued to eat it.

"Not too bad is it?" LeBethany asked her. "So are you going to tell me your name?"

"Milly." she told the woman, after she finished eating the weird fruit.

"That's a nice name." LeBethany said with a warm smile. "Did I tell you my name?"

"Beth."

"That's right." the woman shuffled backwards, away from the entrance of the hollow trunk. "Are you going to come out of there?" she asked.

Milly nodded slowly.

"I just ask you don't run off. There's a river around here and the Alligators are quite deadly." LeBethany looked off to the left. "Heck, they were deadly before the radiation turned them into mouths with legs."

Milly didn't like the sound of that. "Will they eat me?"

"Not unless we get too close to their habitat." She held out her hand. "Come on, you'll get stuck in there."

Slowly, but surely. Milly crawled out of the hollow tree trunk, food case in hand. She sat at the entrance and stared at LeBethany, who retracted her held out hand.

"You're a very brave girl." the woman told her. "How old are you?"

"Ten."

"That's a big number."

"It was my birthday."

LeBethany looked like she had been physically struck. Her face full of sadness. "I'm so sorry."

LeBethany held out her arms, offering a hug, a single tear in her eye. Milly moved forward into the woman's arms, her eyes dry, no longer able to weep any more tears. The hug comforted her, and she never wanted to let that feeling go.

"I miss my mama and daddy." she said distraught.

After a few moments pause LeBethany responded. "I miss mine too."

Milly looked up at her. "Did your parents die too?"

"Yes, my mother long ago. My father." She paused. "Still a long time ago, but not as long."

"Are you lonely?"

"Yes, Milly. I'm lonely."

Milly hugged her tighter. "I'm lonely too."

"Not anymore." LeBethany told her. "Not anymore."

A few minutes later Milly was fast asleep, leant against LeBethany's chest, the sun now threatening to poke itself over the horizon. She looked down at the sleeping girl in her arms.

"When you awake, we'll go find your friends I saw up in town." she whispered. She looked to the ever brightening horizon. "You're safe now." she said, unheard. "You're safe."

Updated: Dec 21st 2013