Hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. In today's chapter, Damian continues his search of Lucy's younger brother. What will he find and how will he deal with the Family? Let's find out. Please enjoy.
Damian left Hamilton's Hideaway about an hour later. The place had turned out to be an ancient cave system converted into a bunker, as mentioned by King, and was inhabited by a small group of Raiders. The Raiders hadn't caused Damian too much trouble, unlike the dog-sized scorpions that swarmed in parts of the bunker.
Damian had not found anyone resembling Ian and his attempt to interrogate one of the Raiders who was still able to talk had resulted in a series of incomprehensible comments about flying metal monsters.
The Moonbeam Outdoor Cinema was still deserted when Damian watched it from afar. The car wrecks and human bones were still at the same place. He approached the metro station. It was on the other side of the highway, surrounded by small shops still intact. Damian watched the buildings from a distance before approaching.
The small shops were all empty and had been looted several times and no one had set foot in them for years. Damian approached the metro exit and heard a humming sound over his head. He turned around and saw one of the Enclave Vertibird approaching his position. Damian took refuge inside the metro and listened. The aircraft approached and Damian heard it slow down. The engine noises remained for a few seconds before they moved away.
Damian stayed a few seconds, looking at the exit to the surface, his assault rifle ready to fire. The Enclave may have dropped troops to establish an outpost, and they would probably come to secure the area. Damian stayed like this for an indefinite time. No matter how hard he concentrated and tried to pick up any sound, all he could hear was silence. He turned around and used his Pip-Boy to light up the corridor that was sinking underground. Damian began to descend, sweeping every nook and cranny with the faint beam of his Pip-Boy's lamp.
The escalator leading to the station had collapsed. Only a door reserved for the metro maintenance crews allowed to continue. The door was framed by two braziers installed in barrels. Damian approached when the door opened on the fly and two ghouls greeted him at gunpoint. One of the ghouls, wearing glasses and a dirty t-shirt and mesh, raised its eyebrows, stretching what little skin it had left on his face. Slowly, Damian raised his hand and looked at the two ghouls in front of him.
"Huh? Uh... you... you... you're not here to steal my secrets?" said one the male ghoul with glasses.
"What secrets?" Damian asked.
"Well, the recipe for Ultrajet," the ghoul replied.
Damian saw him bite his lip and sighed. The other ghoul, wearing combat armor, looked up to the sky in exasperation.
"Well, if you're not here to steal the recipe, why are you here?" asked the ghoul with the glasses.
"Maybe you can put your weapons down first?" Damian said, his hand still in the air.
"Uh? Oh yeah, sorry. We're a little on edge right now."
"Does it have anything to do with the Family?" Damian asked.
The two ghouls exchanged glances before shaking their heads at the same time.
"What kind of stupid name is that?" asked the ghoul in the battle armor.
"I confess that I don't know either," replied Damian. "I'm looking for them because they may have kidnapped a young man who lives in Arefu."
The ghoul with the glasses looked pensive before answering.
"No, I don't see... We've got enough problems of our own to be interested in those of the smooth-skins."
The ghouls returned inside the office and Damian entered as well.
"What makes you think they're here?" asked the ghoul with the armor.
"Well, I was told they could hide here, so I'm checking," Damian answered.
The ghoul with the armor spread his arms and pointed to the small office where they were. All the paraphernalia of the perfect little chemist was laid out on tables, as well as little boxes of cereal that piled up in a corner of the room.
"It is up to you to judge, if anyone other than us lived here, they would have been stepped on by now, this place is so narrow."
Damian sighed. His research had come up empty. He was about to leave when he noticed a small corridor that the ghouls had condemned with planks of wood.
"What's behind that door?" Damian asked.
The ghoul with the glasses lifted his head from his book and looked at the door.
"This is the access tunnel to the caves."
"And what's in those caves?"
"Stuff that made the door to it barricaded," said the ghoul with the armor.
Damian looked for a moment at the wooden planks when the ghoul with the armor approached with a crowbar.
"If you want to be killed stupidly, you can go, smooth-skin. But I warn you, we'll close up behind it right away, and you won't have to come back crying."
Damian nodded his head. He stepped back until the ghoul removed enough space to let him pass.
"Thank you," Damian said after crossing the opening, but the ghouls had already started to put the planks back in place.
The corridor was not very big. At the end, Damian noticed a hole. He approached and heard his Pip-Boy sizzling. The pointer on his Geiger counter was moving slowly but not alarmingly so far. Damian tilted his rifle over his shoulder, and he lit up the inside of the hole. Below him, was a cave, as the ghouls had said. Damian sighed and dropped himself inside the hole.
He landed on the rocky ground. The cave was narrow and dark and smelled of moisture. Damian walked a few meters before he felt something beneath his feet. He looked down and saw the remains of a brahmin. The bones had been there for a long time, but Damian noticed marks on the bones. He picked up one of the bones and took a closer look. The marks looked different from those on the bodies of the West couple, but it was impossible to be certain.
He continued walking into the cave and could hear water oozing from the walls. He came to a small room with a small underground lake which now served as a nest for the Mirelurks. The small crabs that lived peacefully in the Potomac estuary had become mutant animals the size of a man, occupying almost every stream or pond in the area. Fortunately, the crabs were not present. Damian was reluctant to throw a grenade into the nest, but he knew that sometimes the Mirelurks could hide in the ground and pounce on their prey, almost cutting it in half with their large claws. Damian walked away backwards before continuing into the caves.
After a few minutes, he heard a bang. It came from in front of him. He prepared his rifle and continued forward. The Mirelurks didn't use explosives, or so he hoped. Either he had run into another band of Raiders, or he had found the Family's lair. The cave system was just under a metro tunnel. The ceiling had collapsed and the rails and the train that was on them had fallen into the cave.
Damian entered the train and climbed up the car using the bars to help the passengers hold on. He got out of the train and jumped onto the tracks. The tunnel was lit by burning barrels and the emergency lighting was still working, even after two centuries. Small lamps at the base of the walls, each about ten meters apart, provided a faint red light. The tracks were littered with trash and skulls of dead animals, with the same marks on the bones.
As Damian walked a little further down the tracks, he came across a Mirelurk. The mutated crab was on his back and Damian noticed that his legs had been torn off and that a small burn mark marked the ground where it had been standing. Damian approached cautiously and took a few steps back when he saw the mutant crab move. The crab could no longer stand or walk, but it still managed to wiggle its claws around. Damian saw the creature's eyes turn towards him and heard its mandibles rattle. The Mirelurk wouldn't live much longer and would eventually bleed out and die. Apparently, people were living in the tunnels and had set traps to keep the mutants and intruders from getting too close.
Damian went around it and continued to follow the tracks until he reached a fork in the tracks. Part of the tunnel branched off to the left, while the rest was going straight ahead.
Damian noticed a sign on the wall and dusted it off. He was on the Red Line. From memory, it was the one that crossed the Capital Wasteland from North to South and through the ruins of D.C., passing through the districts of Dupont Circle and Anacostia. If the tunnels hadn't all collapsed, which Damian strongly doubted, he could have made it to Rivet City.
Under the line sign, an inscription indicated by arrows the nearby stations. To the North was the line's train depot and the tunnel branching off to the left and South led to Meresti station. Damian thought for a few moments.
"If I were the leader of a Raider gang, would I hide out in the open air in a train depot or underground in an old metro station? " he thought, looking at the two tunnels one after the other.
Meresti station seemed to be the best choice. He went through the tunnel and started walking. After a few minutes of walking in near darkness, Damian stumbled upon another metro train. He squeezed himself between the wall and the train and crept into the small space. He frequently glanced behind him to make sure that a Mirelurk wasn't coming to attack him, although he doubted that a mutant crab was big small to follow him in this confined space. He finally arrived at the front of the car and could jump back on the tracks.
Damian heard a wire twisting at his feet and saw a large object pass in front of his face, and he felt a draft. He heard a shock and stopped. A broken trigger wire was at his feet and was connected to a cable that was swinging a steel beam. The beam had hit the wall just in front of Damian. A few centimeters more and his head would have been smashed to a pulp by the impact.
Damian exhaled gently and directed the light from his Pip-Boy towards the ground. The people who lived in these tunnels really didn't like visitors. Some Mirelurks corpses, all dried up, were lying in the tunnel, probably here for a long time. In total, there were about ten traps that Damian had to avoid or defuse, ranging from a simple trigger wire to an antipersonnel mine. Damian would have liked to disarm it to bring it back to Moira, but he resigned himself to bypass the explosive. Looking back, he still found it hard to believe that he had been able to disarm a nuclear device but was unable to disarm a simple mine.
Damian spotted lights on the other side of a destroyed train blocking the path. He entered the train through one of the doors and looked through the opposite windows. The tunnel was still about ten meters long and Damian could see a small sandbag fortification and braziers further up. He heard the rattling of a gun and crouched into the seat next to him.
"Come out of there, stranger!" a man's voice said. "This place is reserved for the Family! Where do you think you're going?"
Damian was now certain he was in the right place.
"Hey! Are you deaf?"
"Calm down," Damian replied. "I'm coming out."
He got up slowly, spreading his hands away from his rifle. Behind the sandbags he could see a man in a dark green battle armor with a khaki bandanna holding long brown hair and a slight beard. With his eyes squinted, he looked at Damian and pointed a submachinegun in his direction.
"Well," said the man, visibly annoyed at being disturbed during his watch. "What are you doing in these tunnels?"
"I'm looking for a young man, Ian West."
Damian had no reason to lie and the fact that he had not been shot yet, prooved that the Family was maybe not the Raider gang described by Arefu. He noticed that the man raised his eyebrows when he heard the name of Lucy's brother.
"The new guy? What do you want with him?" asked the man.
"I have a letter from his sister."
Damian slowly slipped his hand inside his armor and pulled the envelope out. He lifted it up and twisted it between his fingers to show it to the person he was writing to. The man didn't seem convinced, but he lowered his weapon.
"Mmh, alright, you can go in, but we'll keep an eye on you and you'll have to leave your weapons behind. Ian's here, but to see him, you'll have to talk to Vance first. You should find him on the mezzanine overlooking the common room."
The man stepped back and unlocked a chain-link door on his left. He motioned for Damian to approach. Damian left the train car and approached. The man had set up his guardhouse in the space that allowed former metro employees to move from track to track for maintenance. The sentry watched Damian from the corner of his eye as he unloaded his weapons and bag and walked towards a sliding door leading to a maintenance tunnel.
From there he caught up with another metro tunnel. Unlike the others, this one looked brand new. It was possible to see the effects of time on the walls or rails, but there was no debris or trash, suggesting that the place was regularly and meticulously cleaned. The tunnel was lit by a row of braziers and at the very end Damian could see the station.
The space between the platforms was blocked by wooden planks. Benches and a long table were set up to transform the center of the station into a banquet hall or reception area. At the bottom of the station, access to the tunnels was blocked by barricades and an train car immobilized on the platform. A large concrete platform with escalators allowed access to the corridors leading to the surface. The area was lit by a series of lanterns attached to stakes in the ground or suspended from the concrete barrier of the mezzanine.
Damian climbed onto the platform and after a few steps heard a whistle to his right. He turned his head and saw a female figure in the dark. The woman was leaning against the metal pillar of an old kiosk. She walked towards Damian, who noticed that she was the same age as him. She had fairly short red hair. She was extremely attractive, and Damian took his eyes off the young woman's face and noticed her outfit, a short red skirt revealing stockings and a black suspender belt, a pair of black boots and a grey buttoned jacket, giving a bird's eye view of the young woman's breasts.
Damian watched her approach him. He felt a silly smile forming on his face and concentrated to keep his seriousness.
"Well hello handsome boy," said the woman in a very seductive smile. "I'm Brianna. I take care of the men here... Well, the single ones. What are you doing here alone?"
The woman was speaking in a smooth and bewitching voice. Damian took his eyes off the young woman's cleavage and crossed her eyes. Her emerald green eyes plunged into Damian's and he felt as if the temperature in the room had just risen suddenly. He realized that the woman was literally devouring him with her eyes. Beyond the charming look she was giving him, the young woman was looking at Damian with appetite. Damian saw her bite her lip and reveal a sharp canine tooth. He thought back to the wounds of the West couple and the marks on the bones in the cave and his blood froze.
"Brianna!"
A soft but authoritative voice echoed through the station. The young woman raised her head and Damian imitated her a few seconds later. A man was leaning against the railing of the station mezzanine. He looked at Damian and the young woman, his eyes glowing because of the reflection of the lanterns next to him.
"Please leave our guest alone. I wish to speak with him."
Damian turned his head towards the young woman. All innuendos had disappeared from her eyes and she was content to smile friendly. Damian walked away to the escalator.
"Perhaps we'll see you later, honey."
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the woman was looking at him with a slight smile. Damian cleared his throat to regain confidence and climbed up the broken escalator and arrived at the mezzanine. The space at the back was converted into a dormitory and bunk beds were separated by empty wooden shelves, wooden plates or torn curtains.
The man who had called Damian was taller than him. He wore a long leather coat and a beige trellis with boots. Closely shaved, in his forties, eyes of a metallic blue and hair of a color that was a mixture of black and purple, Damian could feel that he was dealing with a very charismatic and intelligent man.
"Welcome to Meresti," he said with a smile. "My people call me Vance."
"My name is Damian."
"Well, Damian, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit here?"
Damian grabbed Lucy's letter.
"I'm looking for Ian West, I have a letter from his sister."
Vance's eyes wrinkled slightly.
"So, he still has a piece of his human family left," Vance whistled. "All the more reason for him to stay in isolation."
"Human?" Damian asked. "What's different about him from us?"
"Different from you," said Vance as if he had just corrected a child who made a grammar mistake.
"Wait, what difference? What do you mean?"
Vance took a deep breath. He leaned on the edge of the mezzanine and looked down at the few people below.
"You're facing, the scum of society, the oppressed, the abandoned by all. Cannibals, human flesh eaters, monsters, demons, so many degrading nicknames that I and my flock have to endure."
This last sentence gave Damian a cold sweat. He remembered his encounter with the cannibals of Andale. But Vance and his "flock" had a completely different attitude. Certainly, this Brianna had been behaving strangely, but it could be blamed on a very strange seduction game. As he spoke, Vance seemed more and more sad, as if his speech brought back bad memories.
"What are you, really?" Damian asked. "Assuming you don't intend to put me on a spit, what are you?"
"Your reaction is... Interesting," smiled Vance.
He pointed to the metro station at his feet.
"I'll never deny the fact that we've all tasted human flesh, but in all objectivity, I don't consider us cannibals because we simply drink the blood of our prey."
"So what, you're vampires?" Damian asked, feeling a tingling in his throat.
Damian could hardly believe it. Vampires were mythological creatures, folklore brought by Europeans long before the Great War, just good at making up stories or horror movies. Yet all the evidence was there. The bites, the dried corpses of Lucy's parents and Vance's speech. Damian looked around him, wondered if all this was not a gigantic joke and if he wasn't going to see Lucy jumping out from her hiding place, disguised as Dracula like on Halloween. Vance looked at Damian and smiled.
"You're a very cultured person, for our time. Usually, people don't see beyond the tip of their nose."
He let a silence settle in before resuming.
"Ian is like us. He's at a difficult time in his life and he has to make a choice that will change him forever. After what happened at Arefu, he's a little lost."
"So that was him," said Damian more to himself. "He's the one who killed his parents, isn't he?"
"That's right, and thanks to me, he hasn't yet completely succumbed to his thirst for flesh."
"And you want to make him one of you, a vampire?"
"Ian will become a member of the Family. And I'll teach him the Way, I'll teach him how to control the hunger that lies within us."
As incredible as this story was, Damian had to face the facts. The story of becoming a bloodsucker rather than a flesh-eater was nothing strange, considering the world he lived in, and the choice between giving some of his blood or having a leg cut off so that it would end up in a stomach, his choice was quickly made.
Damian let Vance speak for a few more seconds, briefly explaining his "Teaching". He sighed before answering.
"Look, Vance, if you really want to help Ian, don't you think he should choose for himself? He still has a family on the surface and they're worried. Personally, I don't care if he joins you or if he goes to live with his sister, but he has a right to know that she cares and to have a memory of his old life. You were talking about objectivity earlier, so give Ian a chance to have a different opinion about his situation than you do so he can decide for himself."
Vance remained pensive for a few seconds. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small piece of crumpled paper and gave it to Damian.
"You're probably right. If you'd like to speak to Ian, here's the password to the area where he's meditating. It's down the hall to your left."
In a rather theatrical gesture, he pointed Damian down one of the corridors. The young man thanked him with a nod and walked towards the room where Ian was locked up.
Damian glanced briefly behind him. Vance had shown no animosity toward him, nor had the few people he had met. The vampire myth presented them as upper-class, sophisticated, high-society people. None of the people at Meresti station were nobles, but they were much friendlier, despite their tough guy looks, than most people in the Wastes.
The corridor leading to the surface was partly collapsed and the access to the surface was blocked by a landslide. Damian found Ian in part of the corridor leading to the toilet, behind a door locked by a security terminal. Sitting at a small table in front of a plastic bag with a dark red liquid and a steaming coffee pot, Damian saw a young man with dirty and torn clothes.
On hearing Damian enter, he straightened up and stood up.
"Who are you?" he cried out in fear. "What do you want from me?"
"You're a hard man to find, you know that?"
"Maybe it's because I don't want to be found," Ian spat.
Damian grabbed the letter in his armor and gave it to the young man.
"No! Don't come any closer!" the young man cried out. "I'm a monster, a fucking monster!"
"Ian, I know about your parents and I'm sorry for what happened. But your sister's still up there and she's worried about you."
"Lucy? Is she... Is she all right?"
"See for yourself."
Damian handed the letter to Ian who unsealed the envelope and started reading it. At the end, he wiped away the tears that were coming up in his eyes.
"She told me that she misses me very much, just like she misses home."
He sighed deeply and gently folded the letter back.
"Can you... Can you do something for me?"
"Of course," Damian answered.
"Tell Vance I'm sorry, but I've decided to go home to Arefu."
Ian began to gather what little stuff was lying around the room. Damian returned to the metro station and approached Vance. The head of the Family looked over Damian's shoulder and saw Ian waiting in the shadows at the entrance to the station.
"I see that your discussion with Ian led to a decision on his part."
"Yes, he decided to go home to Arefu and he thanks you for the help you tried to give him."
"I am sad to see him go, but Arefu is not far away," said Vance as he waved goodbye to Ian.
"Speaking of Arefu, I think you need to have a little chat about it."
"I understand your concern for these humans," said Vance in a sorry tone. "But you must also understand that, while it saddens me, I must find a way to feed my own."
Damian thought for a moment before he smiled. Vance raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
"I think I have the solution that will solve everyone's problem," Damian said without stopping smiling.
Hope you all enjoyed. I just realized that in a previous chapter, Damian says "War never changes" the famous Fallout line we all know. Well what I realized is that the French translation has not really the same meaning. We translated it by "La Guerre ne meurt jamais", which means "War never dies". Got to admit that when you think about the fact that Mankid almost killed itself in nuclear holocaust in the Fallout universe and that the survivors are still at war with each others, saying that "War never dies", is a great line. A morbid one but a great one. Anyway, until next time.
