13
Racing past broken down Metro carriages, Patience picked up Gia by the arm, dragging her forward. The young girl, stumbling over debris almost fell and if they stopped for even a second, the ghouls would overrun them. Gia caught her footing once more and Patience let the girl go to turn round, fall to one knee bringing her rifle to bear and fired back the way they came.
The eardrum shattering retort echoed a crazy, frantic drumbeat in the enclosed space as bullets ripped into the lead ghoul sending it spinning to the ground, tripping up several others as it fell. She'd bought them precious little time. Bounding to her feet, she returned to a breakneck pace, following the curve of the tunnel, careening off the side of one of the shattered carriages.
Up ahead, she saw Vincent taking cover in a hole, made from a broken section of the track wall, his laser-focus aimed behind her. Valrie and Gia stood behind him, like terrified statues, Gia gripping Valrie with white knuckles. Rushing past Vincent, Patience pushed the two women onwards.
"Keep fucking moving!" Their ashen faces stared at her, but they began to move.
As soon as Patience passed Vincent, he began unloading into the horde of ghouls chasing them, taking careful aim, loosing two shots at a time. Patience couldn't take the time to look back. She forced the other two forward until she saw another pile of rubble. A good size for cover.
"Falling back! Reloading!" Vincent had caught another couple of ghouls, but the others ignored their dead comrades, continuing to rush towards the four humans.
Patience dropped behind the rubble and spun to face back down the tunnel. Vincent, head down, barrelled towards her with a ghoul mere feet from his back. Patience took careful aim and fired. The bullet zinged over Vincent's shoulder, catching the ghoul almost dead centre in its forehead, dropping it like a stone.
It was all they could do to leap-frog each other, one laying down fire, the other beating a retreat. Vincent passed Patience's position taking over pushing the other two forward. The exit to this section of the tunnel was up a short climb and Patience hoped there were no more ghouls up on the next concourse to deal with.
She fired on automatic, now, sending hot metal flying into the bodies of the chasing, screeching, hissing creatures. Several fell in that burst, making a momentary blockage between the carriage and the tunnel walls. She took the opportunity, sprinting up the slight incline to join the others. Vincent leaned against the tunnel wall, breathing heavy, desperate eyes staring onto the concourse, swapping out a magazine and cycling the weapon. As soon as Patience reached them, he arced the rifle overhead and brought it down pointing back down the tunnel.
"Get them up the stairs!" He fired into the darkness of the tunnel, aiming at movement, green, glowing eyes, shadows. "Take the exit on the left, it leads out into the ruins."
"Go! Go!" Patience pointed towards the escalator stairs leading upwards, not twenty feet away.
Valrie reached the stairs first, her little legs pumping double-time as her boots hammered upon the metal, striated steps. Gia stayed close behind the older scavenger. Patience fired some more shots down the tunnel, giving Vincent time to reload once more. When he was ready, he tapped her leg once and she made an immediate turn to follow the other two women.
She was only half-way up the stairs when she heard the scream. Bounding up the remaining stairs, two at a time, she reached the top to see a ghoul crouching above the prone body of Valrie, laying face down on the floor. Before Patience could lift her rifle, an electronic screech pierced the air, a beam of light raced outwards and penetrated the back of the ghoul's skull, leaving a smouldering, cauterised hole.
It collapsed, limp, atop of Valrie. Patience ran to the immobile form, pushing the ghoul to the side, its skin feeling both dry and squishy at the same time. She turned Valrie over, revealing a long set of scratch marks on the football helmet.
"I fucking hate feral ghouls!" Valrie groaned and grabbed Patience's arm to pull herself up. "Check the kid."
Patience left Valrie to stand and moved fast over to Gia, the laser pistol held between two shaking hands, still aimed at the unmoving ghoul on the floor. The girl's entire body was shaking, but she allowed Patience to lift her from the floor, pushing her onwards. They didn't have the time. The noises from below had subsided. Patience could no longer hear the repeated blasts of rifle fire. Either Vincent was dead, or out of ammunition. Either way, she had two people she needed to get to safety. Vincent could take care of himself. Or not.
She could see the exit tunnel, beyond the frame of a car that had fallen into the station from a hole in the roof. Pushing both the other two women, she forced them around the rubble of roof collapse towards that tunnel, only to find their way blocked by several more ghouls heading out of the tunnel
She'd had enough. Firing from her hip, she raked bullets across them all, sending the projectiles blasting into the legs of the creatures, tearing off rotten flesh, shattering bones, sending them all crashing toward the floor. And still they came, crawling towards them, hands outstretched, hissing, gurgling. Patience heard the tell-tale noise of an empty magazine. She palmed the rifle down and, in the same movement, reached for her sidearm. She fired two times each into all the heads of the crawling ghouls and several times into their bodies, for good measure.
The action remained open and she realised she'd emptied the entire clip. With smooth movements, she switched clips in her sidearm, replaced it to her hip holster, replaced the magazine in her rifle and had it at the ready within seconds. She breathed heavy as she moved the rifle in a circular arc. With nothing immediate in sight, she urged the other two on into the exit tunnel.
They followed the curve without any further incident and they began to see the glimmer of light indicating the exit gates of the station. Only a few more feet to safety.
Patience heard movement behind, the pounding of feet, the hissing, gurgling and screeching of ghouls. Without a second's hesitation, they all began running towards the exit. Heart's racing, legs tiring. It almost seemed like they'd been down in the tunnels for days. Weeks. But the way out was ahead. Patience stopped. She heard a different sound. Boots.
She pushed the other women towards the gates and spun around, bringing her rifle to bear back towards the sound of boots. It was Vincent, bloodied, his rifle held in one hand, his arms pumping for his life and ghouls right behind him.
"Get out of the way!" She didn't have to tell him twice, he took an immediate turn and dived to the side.
Patience let fly with every bullet in her weapon, spraying molten death towards the ghouls hissing and screaming at her. When her rifle ran out of ammunition again, she took to her sidearm, walking steady toward the creatures, picking the survivors off with single bullets to the head until she reached Vincent's side, dragging him up by his arm. They both ran to the gates, even as the sound of more ghouls emerged from the depths of the Metro station below.
They made it out of the gates as the ghouls erupted from around the corner. Dozens of them racing toward the gates. Patience looked around and saw the heavy chain still wrapped around Gia's chest. Taking it from her, she closed the gates, wrapping the chain around the handles, but with nothing to tie them closed.
"Here!" Valrie had reached into her many pockets and pulled out a screwdriver.
Patience rammed the screwdriver into the links of the chain as the lead ghouls slammed against the bars of the gates, arms stretching out, reaching, grasping and clutching towards them all.
"Yeah. Fuck you, you fucking degraded bitches!" Valrie dropped to the floor, removing her football helmet and wiping her head with the sleeve of her arm.
The ghouls stopped reaching out of the gates towards them and now only stared at the four people beyond their grasp. Their faces and eyes held no malice, no hunger, no anger. They only stared, shuffling around, jostling one another, sniffing the air and grunting in that hissing, gurgling fashion that their deteriorated throats would allow.
Patience checked her rifle. The barrel, almost red hot from the amount of firing she had performed, seemed fine. She was down to her last two magazines for both her rifle and her pistol. She had more 9mm ammunition, but it needed feeding into the clips she had removed. She mused that she would have to maintain the rifle soon.
Vincent wasn't as lucky. The ammunition supply for his rifle ran out back in the tunnel. Only his .45 remained of use if they entered another firefight. He wiped the blood from the scratch on his cheek, another scar to add to the one above his eye. He slumped his head forward, resting his hands on his knees, his rifle propped up against the wall beside him.
Valrie and Gia both seemed unharmed, but the deep scratches in Valrie's football helmet showed it could have turned out much worse for the scavenger. That ridiculous helmet saved her life and now the older woman, for certain, had a tale to tell. Gia seemed cowed and guilty, and well she might. Her thoughtlessness had caused the attack by the ghouls. Patience couldn't understand someone brought up in this world could make such a stupid mistake.
"I need a fucking cigarette." Valrie reached into a pocket, pulling out a pack of smokes. She took one out, lit it and passed the pack and the lighter to Vincent beside her. "Don't say I never give you anything."
Vincent, weary, took out a cigarette, lit it and breathed in deep, resting his head back against the wall before releasing the smoke in a cloud above his head. He passed the packet and lighter to Patience and she followed suit before passing the pack back to Valrie.
"Hey! What about me?" Gia gawped at them all, enjoying the deadly toxic sticks of tobacco. "I know I screwed up, but, come on!"
"How fucking old are you, anyway?" Valrie squinted at Gia through a haze of blue smoke.
"Well, I have boobs and I've got all the fur." She pointed towards her groin with both hands. "So, I'd say I'm an adult."
"Give the little shit a smoke." Vincent tapped Valrie on the arm and pointed to Gia. Gia looked, expectant, towards Valrie, who sighed and tossed the pack and lighter to the younger woman.
Gia caught the items with a grin, opening the pack and pulling out a cigarette. As soon as they saw her holding it, they knew she'd never smoked before in her life. Holding the cigarette gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, she placed the filter end at the very edge of her lips before sparking the lighter, catching the other end with the flame and breathing in deep.
The reaction came in an instant. A brutal, hacking cough blew out the smoke in a diffuse ball. Gia's eyes looked about to pop and tears pricked in the corners of her eyes. She continued coughing, still holding the cigarette out to the side. She took a tear-filled look at the white tube and then glances at the other three, all chuckling to themselves, before putting the cigarette back to her mouth and trying again.
"Not bad." They had to give Gia credit, despite the hoarse, breaking voice, she managed to hold the second breath down before allowing it to emerge from her lungs. "I usually smoke a different brand."
"Sure you fucking do." Valrie snatched away the packet and the lighter, squirrelling them away inside one of her coat's pockets.
Patience, enjoying the respite from the high intensity of the last hour or so, leaned back against the wall, staring up and out of the Metro entranceway. A tight set of stairs led up and she could see the nearest, partially destroyed, building not far away. Before that building, she could see the remains of a structure reaching upwards. Four iron legs ending in a circular frame that held a large brass globe. A representation of the Earth, with a stylised rocket flying around it.
The building she could see used to have lettering up the side of the wall, now fallen away and lost to time. Beside where the letters had sat, Patience could see a statue thrusting out from the corner. An enormous angel, wings sweeping back towards the building, wearing an ancient warrior's helmet, staring down where once crowds wandered beneath its empty gaze.
"What happens next?" She realised she had almost smoked the entire cigarette in a couple of breaths and flicked the butt at the ghouls beyond the gate, causing their hisses to rise in tone for a second. "How much further to go?"
"We have about a block to go to hit another Metro station, pass through that and then about another three blocks overland to Vault-Tec HQ. Easy." Vincent still found Gia's attempts at smoking to be amusing.
"You mean we have to go through that again? I don't want to see another fucking ghoul in my life. No offence." Those last words, Valrie aimed at the growling monstrosities beyond the gate, holding her hand up in mock apology. "We almost didn't get out of this fucking shit-hole. You nearly died."
"Nah. The other station is clear." He dipped his head and reached for his rifle, interlocking his fingers around it and leaning his weight upon it. "After that, I can't guarantee anything."
"How do you know the other station is clear?" Gia had dropped her cigarette to the side, hoping no-one saw that over half of it still remained. Patience smiled at the green-ish tint to her complexion.
"Because I helped clear it myself." Vincent looked uncomfortable, standing up and facing away from the others. "A while back, but it should still be clear."
"Another job for your rat bastard boss?" Valrie couldn't help but make the dig.
"No. Before I started working for Moriarty." He slung his rifle over his shoulder and checked his .45. "We should get moving. We don't want to be caught outside at night."
Patience jumped up, checking her rifle again. She considered for a second and then tapped Vincent on the shoulder, passing him her last spare magazine. She hoped they wouldn't need to use any more ammunition. There didn't seem to be anywhere to get any more. Even the raiders Gia had once hung around with had run out of ammo. She thought for a second and flipped the RoF to 'single'. Bullets were now a precious resource.
Gia helped Valrie to stand and all four of them tried to mentally prepare for the next stage of their journey. Soon, Vincent began to lead them up the stairs towards the street and then on towards the next Metro station a block away.
Before his head even came in line with the top of the wall of the station steps, Vincent found himself blown to the side. An explosion on the other side of the wall sent a shockwave rippling outwards, causing their ears to ring and their insides to shake. Vincent shook his head and pushed himself upwards. Shaken, but unharmed.
Then they heard bullets flying. Lots of bullets. They pinged and spattered all around, sending metal fragments and shards of broken concrete down to shower upon the four travellers. They weren't the targets, this seemed certain to Patience. She pushed Valrie and Gia's heads down, shielding them with her own body, and ducking her own head, waiting to survive the onslaught and wondering who was shooting at who.
The noise deafened them all. Vincent, recovered enough from the shock wave of the blast, joined the other three, huddling together as more bullets flew and explosions rocked the very ground they crouched upon. Patience heard the unmistakeable burp of a mini-gun, firing hundreds of rounds a second, peppering the air above. It seemed like a full scale battle was being fought in the ruins above.
She raised her head in time to see a Super Mutant stomp into view at the top of the stairs. Raising her rifle, she prepared to fire until she noticed its attention focussed elsewhere, shooting a modified rifle away to the side. It roared in defiance, even as dozens of bullets ripped into its body, tearing off flesh, cracking bones and sending thick yellow blood spraying in all directions. It stumbled as one of its legs got hit, leaving it hanging by a thread of muscle and sending the monster tumbling to the ground.
Patience couldn't tell how long the firefight went on, only knowing that Valrie and, especially, Gia were trembling in terror at the sheer force of the battle's noise.
"What the fuck is going on?" Valrie screamed over the onslaught.
Patience didn't know, herself. After the Super Mutant had appeared, she kept her eye and her rifle trained towards the top of the stairs, ignoring the noise and the ricochets. She had one magazine left and, if she had to, she'd go down fighting. But the noise and the gunfire came to an abrupt stop, only the whine of the mini-gun ratcheting down broke the silence.
Then they heard a stomp, stomp, stomp. Different from the lumbering footsteps of Super Mutants, but a steady, precise and heavy metallic footfall. Patience caught a look in Vincent's eyes. He knew that sound. He put his hand on the barrel of her rifle and pushed it down wards. Then he spun his own rifle to his back and held his hands up in surrender. Patience didn't ask. She took her hands from her rifle, letting it settle back against her chest, and raised her own hands, nodding at Valrie and Gia to do the same.
Within seconds a great, hulking, mechanical figure appeared at the top of the stairs. The figure held a mini-gun with ease, pointing it at the dead Super Mutant, thumb resting on the trigger. Then it turned towards the four of them huddled at the bottom of the stairs, its helmeted head showing nothing of the person underneath. Patience recognised the armour. She'd seen the same style on the dead at the Anchorage Memorial. Brotherhood of Steel.
"Knight Captain Hazel, we've got civs." The voice, electronically filtered and processed, called out from the helmet. The mini-gun turned towards Patience and her companions. "Don't move. Don't even breathe."
The armoured person soon became joined by another, this one with different colours and symbols etched into the armour and not wearing a helmet. The woman, somewhere in her fifties, had short cropped black hair with wisps of grey highlights, and sported a wicked scar down the entire right side of her face, causing her mouth to turn upwards at the corner giving her a permanent sneer.
"Look like raiders. Check them over and confiscate any Brotherhood property they've stolen." The Knight Captain stopped before turning away and stared towards Vincent, his head down, staring at the floor. "Wait a minute. You, the man, stand up."
"Fuck you, you god damned fascists!" Valrie had recovered from the terrifying nature of the battle, standing up and moving in front of Vincent. "We've done nothing wrong and you've got no fucking authority here."
"It's alright, you crazy old goat, they're not going to hurt us." Vincent stood up, still with his hands raised, and stepped in front of Valrie. He raised his eyes and stared at the Knight Captain.
"Well, I'll be damned." The Knight Captain stood in silence for a second, nodding her head, then turned to walk away. "Knights Kowalski and Bitterman, help Knight Foreman to take these people into custody. We're heading back to base. Move out!"
"Now, just a fucking minute!" Patience caught Valrie before she could race up the stairs and before Knight Foreman's thumb could press on the trigger of the mini-gun.
"Valrie, that gun just cut a Super Mutant to shreds. Do not antagonise them!" It was difficult, but Patience calmed Valrie down as two other Brotherhood Knights appeared, stomping into view.
The Knights ushered the group up the stairs, taking their rifles and pistols from them. Gia didn't like losing her shiny laser, but there was little any of them could do.
Now, as Patience surveyed the aftermath of the battle, she saw why the battle had seemed so close. Two more Super Mutants lay dead on the other side of the wall where they had hidden themselves. If the Brotherhood of Steel hadn't fought them, Patience and the others would have walked right into the group of three monsters.
The Brotherhood hadn't had the battle all their own way. Three Knights were receiving treatment for injuries and another three lay on the ground, dead, their helmets removed, their armour battered and broken. Brotherhood soldiers stared at them as they passed, that empty, distant stare that warriors developed throughout history. The stare of people that had seen too much death.
The Knights guided them across the square, past a building where only concrete support beams remained and the broken floor revealed the basement below. A toilet bowl, incongruous in the surroundings, sat on a crumbling piece of floor clinging to side of one of the supports. Turning to the left, they entered an alley, passing big, rusted yellow dumpsters and soiled mattresses, bent and useless shopping carts and clusters of human skeletons.
The path weaved to the right after a short while and then the alley opened up to another area where the buildings had fallen into huge pules of rubble with almost no infrastructure left intact, apart from one building they headed towards. As they passed through this building, Patience noticed the school desks and lockers. She didn't want to think about the skeletons she could see here, or how old they must have been when the bombs fell.
Exiting the school, they found themselves in a square with another brass globe and surrounding rocket, the same as near the Metro station. This one on a pedestal above a dried out fountain. Gia grabbed Patience's arm, tugging at her and pointing up at the only building she had seen so intact. She could see three huge letters hanging on the front of the building. "GNR".
"You know what this is?" Gia breathed, giddy, excited, still tugging Patience's arm. "It's the GNR building! Galaxy News Radio. Where Three Dog is!"
"If this is the radio station, what are these Brotherhood people doing here?" Patience looked back at Valrie, who shrugged, and then at Vincent. He looked slumped, almost as if he felt defeated. "Vincent?"
"The GNR building's been an FOB for the Brotherhood for a while now." Vincent glanced up the stairs to the building, passed the piles of sandbag defences and straight at Knight Captain Hazel, stood at the top of the stairs, staring right back at Vincent.
"Knights Kowalski and Bitterman, take the civs to the canteen, see they get some decent chow. Keep an eye on them, though." Knight Captain Hazel turned to Vincent. "And you, Brother Vincent, in my office. I want a full debrief."
Patience echoed the surprise of Valrie and Gia. Brother Vincent? Whatever happened now, it was clear that Vincent had not been completely honest. Not to them and, it seemed, not to his boss, Colin Moriarty.