12
She turned off the radio and the silence became deafening. Every footstep sounded like an avalanche. She could hear the smoker's breathing of Valrie, the little clicks and metallic tinks of the rifles that she and Vincent carried and the rustling of clothing. She even heard her own breathing through her nose.
The smoke clung to their lungs, caused their line of sight to diminish, revealing only a few feet ahead at any time. To their left, she saw two doors appear from the gloom and she indicated to Vincent to check the one further ahead as she stepped towards the nearest one. Gia almost attached herself to her shoulder, sticking far too close for Patience's liking.
Reaching out, careful and steady, she turned the handle and pushed, raising her rifle as the door swing an erratic path open. She found it incredible that there were still working lights in the station and, here in this room, the single fluorescent strip light blazed, clearing any shadows from sight. It was a bathroom, a ladies, with several closed stalls and three wash basins.
A dull skittering sound came from inside one of the stalls and she gripped the rifle tight, side-stepping towards it. Her hand shook as she reached for the stall door. The intensity of the whole thing had started to get to her, this was clear. A quick push sent the door banging against the stall sides and something jumped out towards her face.
"Radroach!" Gia shouted, even as Patience recovered her composure, turning her rifle in one swift movement.
She was too late, though. Gia had launched her baseball bat at the creature as it tried to run out of the bathroom door. The young girl slammed the bat down onto the creatures back, hitting it several times, each hit punctuated by an excitable shout. She kept hitting even as the radroach became a smear of ichor and body parts on the floor, each hit sending a thudding echo throughout the station, not even dulled by the smoky air.
"Gia! Stop!" Patience hissed, grabbing for the girl's arm and seeing the crazed, wide-eyed look on the girl's face. "You're making too much noise!"
Gia stopped hitting the radroach, grinning. Half-giggling, half-gulping in breaths. Patience considered they had made a mistake allowing the girl to follow. Although, she had said she would have followed anyway. At least with her close by, Patience could try to keep her more exuberant excesses to a minimum.
With the immediate threat ended, Valrie pushed into the bathroom, checking the trash can, opening each stall door and checking everything. The floor, the toilet bowls, even the cisterns. Shaking her head, Valrie seemed disappointed. Even now, the older woman was scavenging. It was her livelihood, after all.
"Other door was the men's bathroom. Couple of radroaches. Nothing else." Vincent kept his voice low, keeping his eye further into the station.
"We had a radroach too! I killed it! Dead, dead, dead. Pow!" Gia didn't seem to know how to whisper, swinging the baseball bat around to punctuate her story.
"Don't get fucking cocky, kid." Valrie pushed past Gia, shoving the bat downwards as she passed. "And keep your fucking voice down or we'll have worse than fucking radroaches on our asses!"
"There looks like an office on the other side of the hall." Vincent nodded across the station hall to a door cloaked in the haze of the smoke.
He coughed into the crook of his elbow. Patience knew the smoke was getting to them all and they needed to get under the blanket of it before they became ill. They couldn't, however, leave any place uninvestigated. The last thing they needed was an attack from behind because their throats were a little scratchy and they couldn't bother to check a possible hiding place.
She and Vincent headed for the office door. Patience placed her back against the wall and held on to the door handle. With a nod from Vincent, she opened it, pushing the door wide and followed the bodyguard as he swept inside.
The first room, half-filled by a collapsed ceiling, was empty. They switched positions, Patience using her weapon to point to possible spaces for attack, she crouch walked into the next room, followed by Vincent. Seeing no enemies, she relaxed a little.
"Clear." She whispered.
"Clear." Vincent confirmed.
The air in the offices had much less smoke in it than the rest of the station outside. As Valrie and Gia filed in, Patience closed the door to lessen the spread of the smoke, then returned to the other room. Several filing cabinets lined one wall and Valrie swooped upon them, searching each and every drawer. Along the other wall, she could see a computer terminal on a metal desk. An old telephone hanging off the hook. Set into the wall, a square safe sat, a little green light blinking in the centre.
"Check the computer, maybe there's a map, or information added after the bombs dropped that might be useful." She asked Vincent, but it was Gia that dived behind the desk, installing herself into the ragged, flea-bitten desk chair.
"I'll do it! I'm awesome with computers!" The young ex-raider cracked her knuckles in a dramatic flourish and then drummed her fingers on the top of the desk, dipping her head to look on both sides of the bulky box. "Where's the 'on' button?"
"Jebus fucking Christ!" Valrie, satisfied she had found everything in the filing cabinets, stormed to the other side of the desk, pushing the chair bound Gia out of the way. "I'll fucking do it. I'm no Moira, but I do alright."
Patience was glad someone was alright with the computer. By instinct, she knew that working with the terminals was not part of her training. She looked at the box and keyboard and her mind was blank. Conversely, as soon as Vincent had thrown the Chinese rifle to her, she knew she could break it down, maintain it and reassemble it in seconds. The information was, somehow, there waiting to filter through. No such information bobbed in the outskirts of her mind about computers.
"Nothing. Just inter-company bulletins. But the safe can be unlocked from here. I don't have that much skill. Moira could do it. Fucking easy." Valrie noticed a Vault-Boy bobblehead on the desk and secreted it into one of her many pockets. That made Patience smile, despite the circumstances.
"I can do it!" Gia saw them all looking at her and forced her face into something she considered stern. "I can! Trust me. Just give me a second."
Gia tapped on the keyboard for a few minutes, raising her eyebrows, frowning, punching the screen. Patience sighed and was about to turn away to leave the offices, when she heard a click and a 'whoop' from Gia. The girl spun the desk chair around, throwing her arms in the air. Patience nodded to Valrie to check out the safe.
"Now, that's fucking nice!" Valrie had swung the safe door open and almost rubbed her hands with glee. Gia joined her, her eyes widening at what she saw.
"Ooh! Shiny! Mine!" The young girl reached into the safe, slapped away by Valrie as she indicated that Patience and Vincent should take a look.
With the door closed, the smoke from outside couldn't circulate. It was still in the air, though, and Patience decried her new name once more, itching to keep moving and get into some semblance of clean air. Vincent and Valrie, however, didn't seem to see the urgency in needing to move on through the Metro station.
They stood around the desk, holding Gia back, and stared at the objects they had removed from the safe. It looked like a gun, but unlike any weapon Patience could recall seeing. With tubing and glass in the place of a normal barrel and a grip with a circular hole in the bottom, instead of a slot for a clip, it looked bizarre. Several round capsules, like batteries, sat beside it. Valrie leant on her elbows to look close at the device.
"What the fuck is a laser pistol doing in a Metro station?" The older woman reached out and poked the pistol, turning it around on the desk. "I mean, sure, a fucking gun in case of emergencies, but a fucking laser pistol? That's military. What were they expecting? Fucking aliens?"
"Who cares? It's mine!" Gia reached for the weapon again, her hand slapped away once more, the back of the hand beginning to redden from the number of times Valrie had hit it. She scowled and pointed to each of the others in turn. "She's got big fucking guns, he's got big fucking guns, you're too old to pull a trigger. So, mine! Logic!"
"Watch your fucking language." Valrie slapped the back of Gia's head. "You're not getting the gun."
Ignoring Gia's pout, Patience picked up the gun, turning it around in her hands. She'd never seen a gun like it, so how did she know how to break it down put it back together? She picked up one of the capsules, a power cell, and clicked it into place. The pistol lit up with a whooshing noise and Patience could feel it hum in her hand. A dial at the back, where the hammer would be on a normal gun, seemed to control the strength of the beam.
"Set in on low, lock it and give it to the girl. It'll work against ghouls on that setting." Vincent hooked a thumb at Gia. "Otherwise she's just a damned liability, especially with that damned mouth of hers."
Patience thumbed the dial down low, pushed the dial down, span the pistol around in her hand and offered it to Gia. The girl's eyes almost popped out of her head, her mouth a comical 'O', and she grabbed the pistol from Patience's hand pointing it the walls, the safe, the filing cabinets. Valrie groaned, rubbing her eyes with one hand.
"This is a bad fucking idea." Pushing herself up, Valrie took two of the power cells, dropping them in a pocket and gave the remainder to Gia. "If you shoot any of us with that thing, deliberate or accident, I will kick your fucking ass so hard you'll never, ever sit down again."
"Oh, don't be so grumpy, grandma." Gia put the spare power cells in a pouch at her waist. "I'm awesome with guns. You'll see."
"Let's keep moving or this smoke will kill us before any ghouls do." Force of habit made Patience check her weapons' status before starting to move to the door. She caught Gia's eyes and held them. "Keep quiet. Don't talk. If you think you need to talk, you don't. If you really think you need to talk, whisper. And, just don't fucking shoot us, alright?"
Gia mimed zipping her lips shut and gave a thumb's up sign. Rolling her eyes and controlling the sigh she felt she needed to make, Patience looked at Vincent. He nodded, ready to move out. Valrie, likewise, nodded her readiness. Patiences made a tiny jerk of the head towards Gia and Valrie understood. Keep any eye on the excitable ex-raider. She opened the door and Vincent led the way back into the hall.
From the doorway, they turned right, keeping low to minimise the effects of the smoke. They reached the ticket barriers first and found a skeleton reaching up, a ticket in its hand, pointing towards the ticket slot. As gruesome as that was, Patience had seen worse. The hallway swept around to the right and started to slope downwards. The air began to clear, somewhat, as they descended, the smoke lingering above their heads now. Keeping to the sides, Patience moved forward towards an archway that led to the underground concourse and the source of the smoke.
Before entering the concourse, Patience and Vincent both roved the muzzles of their rifles into the space opening up beyond the archway. This was a raised walkway, above the main platform of the station. Parts of the roof above had caved in, leaving mounds of rubble piled up at several points. And, further down, almost in the centre of the walkway, a large bonfire blazed, sending smoke rippling into the air.
Most of the smoke escaped from the holes in the roof, but some bounced and trickled back downwards, causing the miasma in the entry way they had come through. If not for the holes in the roof, the station would have been impassable. Patience wondered what kind of fool would build such a big fire inside?
Vincent indicated he'd not seen any movement and slipped into the walkway area, ghosting away to the right, even as Patience slipped in and peeled away to the left. Valrie held Gia back, for the moment, the young girl struggling to join up with Patience. Navigating the mounds of rubble, Patience came upon the first signs of who could have started the fire.
Lined up against the parapet wall, she found several dirty, stained mattresses. One, a smaller one, still had an old teddy bear placed, with great care it seemed, at the top end of the mattress next to the only pillow. Someone had brought their family down here. To escape raiders, or Super Mutants, or any number of other things, Patience didn't know. With the fire still burning, it wasn't that long ago, either.
The fire was too big for cooking, or keeping warm. It was for protection, built high to fend off things that didn't like heat, or, especially, light. She passed the line of mattresses, heading closer to the fire, passing other signs of habitation. Fresh, emptied cans, boxes of breakfast cereal, bottles of water, cracked and dripping their contents. A suitcase, flipped onto its side, looking like the maw of a toothless monster, and clothes thrown around on the floor, ripped and shredded.
And then she found something else. An arm, still in a dirty brown suit jacket, laid on the floor. Patience could see bite marks in the material and on the skin of the arm that she could see. Bite marks and scratches. The arm, ripped from the body, had blood pooling and congealing around the tattered end where a piece of bone poked out as if searching for the shoulder to reattach to.
A little further around, Patience found another body. This one, she assumed, must have been the mother. A cute, but filthy, summer dress with blue flowers superimposed on the yellow material. Patience would say the dead woman was lying face down, if she had a head. Where the head should be, Patience only saw a creeping pool of blood. The rest of the body had the same bite and scratch marks as the disembodied arm.
And still no sign of the child. In her sad reverie, she almost missed Vincent waving for her to join him. She moved fast, keeping low, and joined him at the other side, near the escalators. He used military hand signals again. Look over, downwards. Over ten enemies, spread out. They needed to go down the escalators, double-back and go through the south tunnels. Patience nodded. She understood.
She took a glance over the parapet and caught sight of her first feral ghoul. Laid atop a broken down Metro carriage, seeming asleep but twitching its legs and arms. It looked gaunt, ravaged. Its skin thin and parchment-like, a strip of cloth, that may once have been clothing, draped over its groin. Fingers like claws. She took an extra second and looked around. She saw several more of them in various places, laid or sat down. Almost dormant.
She returned behind the parapet to see the concerned face of Vincent and knew. They had to go down and hope and pray they didn't disturb any of them, or they'd never get through alive.
Valrie and Gia soon joined them and Patience made it perfectly clear to Gia that she needed to remain silent. The young woman made vigorous nods, but Patience continued to stare until the nods became serious and contrite. The last thing they needed was any noise at all to alert the feral ghouls to their presence.
Pointing at Vincent, Patience indicated he would be moving first, followed by Valrie, then Gia with Patience taking up the rear. Vincent adjusted his grip on his assault rifle, his eyes closed as he breathed deep, his head leaning back against the parapet. Patience could see the sweat upon his brow in the light of the bonfire, still burning behind them.
That could be a problem. She didn't know how well the ghouls could see, but for a few desperate seconds, each of them would project a noticeable silhouette due to the fire. They could minimise that by keeping low and tight to the sides of the escalators, but it would still be there. She only hoped that Valrie and Gia could get low enough to mitigate the problem.
When she was certain everyone was ready, she tapped Vincent on the shoulder. His eyes snapped open and began to move. Reaching the entryway of the escalator, he glanced around once, then slipped down onto the steps. Despite his size and wearing big, strong boots, he made no sound, disappearing down the stairs. Valrie was next, an awkward bend to her back, using the escalator sides to steady herself, she followed the big bodyguard.
Gia surprised Patience by following Valrie with graceful, light steps, almost as if she were dancing, the laser pistol gripped in a firm hand, the baseball bat tied to her back. As she left Patience's view, Patience lifted her rifle muzzle up and crouch walked forward.
Vincent reached the bottom of the stairs, sweeping his rifle around, pausing on each of the places he had identified a ghoul. He didn't look back, but waited. Soon Valrie joined him, crouching down a step up, then Gia and then Patience. Patience was about to tap Gia on the shoulder, a sign to pass the tap forward, when she heard a gargling hiss to the side.
The ghoul on top of the Metro carriage lifted its head, opening its mouth and emitting that strange, eerie, inhuman hiss. It sniffed the air, turning its head upwards towards the overhead walkway. Raising up on all fours, it turned in a circle before laying back down. Patience could feel her hand almost cramp up with tension, held above Gia's shoulder. After a few seconds, she made the tap.
As soon as the taps travelled down the line to his shoulder, Vincent moved around the corner, heading towards the southerly tunnels. Patience kept watch, covering him as dropped down onto the tracks and moving up to a good spot to concertina the group again. Patience watched as Valrie turned the corner and then Gia. Down here, away from the bonfire above and with weak beams of light filtering down from the broken roof, Patience got a better look at the devastation in the Metro station.
Bones were everywhere, some with remnants of tattered clothing attached, with watches or jewellery, which even Valrie didn't disturb. Victims of the nuclear bombs or dead after the fact, Patience couldn't tell. Metro carriages skewed against the track walls, or jumped the tracks entire. Cars had crashed down onto the concourse from the streets above and everywhere rubble piled high. Concrete, rebars, wood, glass, every material one could imagine littered the area.
She had drifted. The others waited for her, clinging to the wall of the tracks, keeping their heads low. She made one more sweep with her rifle and moved quick and low to join the others. Vincent looked around, screwing his eyes up in question. What had taken her so long? She signalled she was okay. He nodded and used hand signals to state their next moves. One tunnel blocked at the entrance, the other blocked further down. They would use one tunnel then cross through to the other. Patience assumed some kind of maintenance side shaft.
When Vincent felt satisfied everyone was ready, he began moving up the track, maintaining awareness, using his rifle at all times, he headed towards a make-shift bridge across the tracks made from planks of rotting wood. Gia almost kicked a rusted tin can, but caught her foot in time. The girl was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the ghoul attacked Vincent.
The creature, sleeping beneath the wooden bridge, had remained hidden by the piles of debris, the harsh, hissing, gurgling noise cut short by Vincent's hand. He reacted fast and Patience had to react fast, too. Gia, surprised by the sudden movement from the ghoul, gasped in a lungful of air and was about to scream. Dropping her rifle to dangle against her chest, Patience dived towards Gia, her arm wrapping around the girl's throat, clamping her hand over her mouth, her other arm wrapping around Gia's arms, dragging her down to the ground and holding her so tight, the girl struggled to breathe.
Vincent struggled, also. He'd stopped the feral ghoul from making a noise, but now the creature chewed upon his hand, scratched at his face, kicked and kneed the bodyguard, ferocious and wild. Vincent reached down to his belt, scrambling for his knife while he twisted and bobbed his head away from scything, claw-like fingernails. Pushing the creature down, he drew his knife and slammed it up under the ghoul's jaw sending the blade biting deep into its skull and piercing what remained of its brain. He twisted and wiggled the blade, cutting in to more of the brain, the creature's blood oozing over his hand.
With a final kick of the legs, the ghoul became immobile, limp. Dead. Vincent, breathing heavy, his eyes wide, looked around. He found his rifle and brought it to bear, moving the muzzle around, awaiting the onslaught. As the seconds ticked by and no more ghouls attacked, Patience released her grip on Gia, who gasped for air. Patience pointed to Vincent then made the 'ok' sign. He nodded, shaking his left hand and clenching it several times.
Patience felt amazed that Gia didn't launch into a tirade of curses, angry at Patience handling her like that, but she surprised everyone by remaining silent, edging past the dead ghoul as they all made their way to the tunnel entrance.
Taking their time, being careful, they reached the tunnel entrance without further incident. Patience turned back the way they came, keeping her eye out while edging backwards, her shoulder brushing the wall. She glanced over her shoulder to see Vincent pass the first maintenance area, pushing on, following the curve of the tunnel. She kept a tense watch on their rear as they neared a second side area. Again, she glance back to see Vincent turn the corner into the maintenance area. Then Valrie moved around. Still edging backwards, Patience assumed Gia followed suit.
"Ooh! Nuka-Cola!" Gia thought she whispered it, but the words carried. Echoing into the tunnel.
Patience's eyes widened in horror as she realised what was happening. She turned and tried to run around the corner, but she was too late. Gia, stood before a Nuka-Cola dispenser, her hand still pressing the button. And then the machine banged and rattled as a bottle came tumbling from its stocks, rolling into the moulded metal catcher. Gia's face looked horrified.
"I didn't think it still worked!" She made an almost pleading face towards Patience.
"Oh, fuck!" Valrie slapped the top of her football helmet.
Patience didn't have time to feel annoyed. She looked back around the corner. She could see movement. Slow at first, but gathering pace. Figures moving in the shadows, crawling atop the abandoned Metro carriages, crawling beneath them. Green eyes radiating out from the darkness and many hissing, gargling noises. Coming their way.
"Run!" She hissed, turning to see the others looking at her. She decided it was too late for stealth and yelled. "Fucking run!"