She wiped the blood out of her face. A victorious smirk was pursing her lips as she kneeled down and ripped the 10mm gun from the Triggerman's hand, and emptied it from its ammo. This mission was going to be a nice source of caps once all the weapons she gathered would be sold to K-L-E-O, on top of the reward Charlie now owed her. After the three warehouses, her bag was becoming pretty heavy for her to carry, so she popped a Buffout pill.
"A little pick-me-up, heh?"
"Don't worry, mum, I'll be careful," she replied to her companion, sticking her tongue out. "At least Dogmeat doesn't judge me."
"You could rip this mutt's tail off with your bare hands, it would still follow you to the bowels of Hell and back, " the young man said while patting the dog on the head.
She put on a falsely outraged look on her face, her hand resting dramatically on her chest.
"You would accuse me of such sadistic behavior, furthermore towards this poor canine soul? Who do you think I am? I couldn't hurt a fly..."
"You tell that to this guy at your feet, then..."
"This has nothing to do with it. He surprised me, and I got a bit carried away. Not my fault my knife reacts faster than my brain. And anyway, if you want us to get those caps, he needed to go, so... Unless you're no interested in the money anymore?"
Her companion punched her lightly on the shoulder, and they headed out of the warehouse. She had a few bruises and scratches, but nothing too serious. Not like she had flawless skin to preserve anymore anyway, and the caps that she would win at the end were worth it. She and her friends badly needed them.
Her morning had started particularly well. She had kissed her husband, still asleep in their bed, and went to the bathroom to get prepared. She'd taken a long, hot shower; anointed her scalp with that expensive serum she swore by; put her usual makeup on. She was listening to the soft humming of their robot butler, Codsworth, hovering over the floor of the brand new kitchen (pastel green, thanks to all the sweet-talking she did to Nathan), and smelled with delight the odor of freshly brewed coffee. On her way to the kitchen, she stopped by their son's room: still asleep in his crib, Shaun was breathing peacefully. Such a soothing sound.
Then, the first hint of what was next came up, in the form of a salesman at their doorstep. He was wearing a tan suit and that smile so typical of people used to bargaining.
"Good morning! Vault-Tec calling!" he exclaimed with unnatural joy.
She let a sight past her lips, and smiled politely:
"At least I can say you guys at Vault-Tec are enthusiasts, even in front of disappointed customers. We signed the first official demand to enter the neighborhood vault five months ago. We then had to prove my husband's veteran status, certify that I'm American, attest that we didn't steal our son from anyone, sign three sworn statements testifying we weren't planning on attending to national security... Then two weeks ago we sent back to you all that paperwork you told us was newly required in two copies... What's now?"
"Oh, ma'am, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. But I'm coming with good news: I'm here today to tell you that because of our family's service to our country, you have been accepted to enter Vault 111"
"You took your sweet time, huh?" asked Nathan's familiar voice in her back.
She turned to greet her husband, who was still in his pj's, beard unshaven and hair all over the place.
"Hi, honey! Don't worry, it's almost done now, I won't bother you anymore with this..."
"Yeah, yeah" he muttered, then to the salesman "We waited far too long to have you take into consideration my wife's rightful demands. Be glad she's more patient than me."
"Once again sir, I... I am very sorry for the inconvenience" he replied, facing the built like a tank man. "Just need your signatures, and then you'll be all clear to profit from your neighborhood's vault luxuries, in case of a... total nuclear annihilation."
Handing the clipboard to the woman still holding the door open, he smiled weakly, hoping that she would put herself between him and her companion. She smiled back, signed" Éléanore Jacquet-Johnson" at the bottom, and passed it at her husband. He signed with a grunt and gave it back to the salesman, who took it as if he was removing a bone from a tiger's maw. Apparently relieved to still have his arm, he took a step back and said:
"Wonderful! That's... everything... Just gonna walk this over to the Vault! Congratulations on being prepared for the future!"
Éléanore closed the door and turned to put a gentle hand on her husband's arm.
"Thanks, Nate. I know you don't get the point of all this but..."
"I know darling. Hard to forget your father's paranoid education, huh?"
"Come on, you like him, admit it." She teased him.
"He is a great guy, with a practical mind, and he raised you to be the greatest woman who ever walked this earth. " Nathan kissed her gently on the last word. "But he'd be even better if he didn't carry around this silly survival backpack, convinced that doomsday is tomorrow."
"Survivor's kit" Éléanore corrected.
"Whatever you say, El. My sweet far-sighted paranoid wife"
She giggled at the obvious teasing, and they sat down at the counter, sipping their coffee while listening to the fear-inducing news on the TV. Same old, same old. Codsworth asked for help with Shaun, who was now fully awake and changed thanks to the robot. How he got to be so careful and precise with only a pair of pliers, a rotating saw and a flamer was still a mystery to El. Nate got the occasion to brag a bit about fixing the rocket mobile they bought at an attic sale, right after the first ultrasound of their son. Éléanore thanked him with a kiss, a wink, and a promise of the kind of walk in the park that brought Shaun to their life. He put some clothes on in a fake hurry, telling her that he was not to be late to such a walk appointment, earning her laughter in return.
Then... Then everything went haywire. The newscaster stuttering over his notes, informing that nukes were falling from the sky, over New York, Pennsylvania, God knew where else... Sirens blasting in the neighborhood, Nathan running to get Shaun out of his crib, shouting at Codsworth to guard the house in a strange sense of priorities. El grabbed the hunting knife her father had gifted her so long ago and stuffed it in her pocket, along with the family IDs she had grabbed from a drawer in the entrance, then rushed at the door in her husband's footsteps. Running past the frightened neighbors, past the vault tec employees showing them the way, past the bridge behind their suburbs, past the fence gate where many, oh so many of their acquaintances were turned away by the security. They checked in quickly, El thanking the skies that the salesman did his job rapidly, this time. She turned back while trotting uphill, catching a glimpse of all these familiar faces, and even the salesman's one, wondering what will happen of them. Nate tried to reassure her, but he didn't believe it himself. When they arrived on the large platform - surrounded by crates, Vault-Tec security guards, and a few caravans - they were the last of around a dozen of their neighbors, along which the Callahans and the Ables, good friends of them.
Then they saw the bomb drop, far south of them, at the same time they felt the platform rumbling under their feet, starting its slow descent. It was like watching a thunderstorm, they saw the explosion before they heard it, creating scared gasps and horrified screams around them. The blow hit them, seconds before the platform was low enough for the sliding trap door to close. The calm hit them almost as hard, cold and dark.
Landing on the ground at the bottom, they all looked shaken, not realizing what happened. Their anxious murmurs rang against the concrete walls, while Vault-Tec security exhorted them to proceed to the check-in.
When her turn arrived, El grabbed the blue and yellow jumpsuit the reassuring lady employee handed her. Everything felt... off, like unreal, unbelievable. She reached for Nathan's hand and didn't let go while the three of them followed the doctor who was introducing them to the vault. Why would she care that it was "Vault-Tec's most advanced facility", or believe that a "better future underground" was awaiting? It was the end of the world for God's sake.
The family arrived in a room full of pipes and wires, linked to twelve weird pods with open doors. There, the doctor asked them to put their new jumpsuit on, hidden by merely a folding screen: Éléanore guessed that modesty was already a thing from the past. She took Shaun from Nathan's arms to let him change, then gave him back to put her jumpsuit on.
"Geez, this doesn't have pockets."
"You seriously brought your knife in here?" whispered Nathan. "Is it even allowed?"
"I don't know, and I don't really care. My father would disown me if he learned that I went through... this without a trusting knife. Besides, I don't plan on using it, it's just..."
Just a souvenir from him, she realized. She was probably not gonna see him ever again. It brought tears to her eyes.
"Oh, Papa, are you at least okay ?"
"Shhh, darling" Nathan said, embracing her. "We're fine, and he probably is too. He'll have his fine little bunker cave in the forest, yelling at everyone 'I told you so'"
She had a nervous chuckle. Even if it wasn't true, she could very well picture her dad like that. She took a sharp breath, slid the knife in the boot that was provided with the jumpsuit, and folded the folding screen. Following the doctor's indications, they stepped in their pods, listening to his explanations.
"The pod will decontaminate and depressurize you before we head deeper into the vault. Just relax"
She waved at her husband, who made Shaun wave back with his adorable little hand.
"Time for a whole new life" she whispered for herself. Her stomach was twisted with fear, and she didn't manage to shake off the feeling.
"Resident secured" seemed to answer the metallic voice of the pod. "Occupant vitals: normal. Procedure complete, in 5... 4 …"
A chill ran down El's spine. Why was she so cold?
"3..."
She watched her breath form vapor in front of her eyes.
"2..."
If she could just close her eyes for a few minutes...
"1..."
She never heard that number.
She frowned in her sleep, trying to forget this horrible nightmare where the apocalypse happened, where she was put asleep by this weird pod just to wake up and see he husband being murdered by a bald scarred guy, and her son being taken by a woman dressed in a hazmat suit. She should stop to watch these weird sci-fi horror movies on Thursday nights with Nate, it wasn't doing her any good. She tried to roll on her side and reach for the blanket: he had once again taken it all during his sleep. They should call the repairer, it wasn't normal for their house to be so cold with the heaters on, probably an isolation problem.
When her fingers hit the wall of the pod, she opened her eyes, realizing that she wasn't in her bed, that Nate wasn't next to her, that the heater of their house was now the least of her concern. Taking everything in like a kick in the gut, she froze in shock. It wasn't a nightmare.
Coming back to her senses, she hit the door in front of her with her fists, desperate. Surprisingly, the door opened with a hiss, and she heard the metallic voice state:
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately"
She stumbled out of her pod, falling on all four, her legs incapable of holding her weight. Shivering, coughing, retching, it took her a few moments to be able to get to the pod in front of her. She gasped at the sight of her husband's frosted blood, her hands shaking frantically while she tried to open the door.
"Non, non, non, non... Nathan..."
After she pulled the lever next to the pod, it opened, revealing its terrible content. She fell again on her knees, holding her dead husband's legs and sobbing, feeling like someone had ripped her heart from her chest. She grabbed his frozen hand, begging him to come back, to not let her alone. The metallic voice was still repeating its mantra.
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately"
El didn't realize how much time she spent in this position, but when she felt Nathan's hand becoming warmer, she held back her sobs. She wasn't going to let him defrost and then decompose in here. Taking his wedding ring, she kissed his forehead, her tears wetting his skin. Pushing back the lever made the door close. Trying to contain the tears still dripping from her face, she checked in the other pods of the room. None of them opened, all their occupants looking asleep. At the entrance of the room, the young woman found a terminal, which informed her that except her and Nate, everyone else was dead of asphyxiation. An isolated remote override of the system had also been detected, and all the controls were disabled.
"Why would Vault-Tec do this?" whispered El, her hands resting on the keyboard of the terminal. "I can't be the only one here. There must be someone alive left".
Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jumpsuit, she went to the automatic door, which slid open at the push of a button. Her steps echoing on the metal walls, still shivering, she directed herself to the first room on her left. Even more Cryopods, even more frozen dead bodies inside. If she counted well, at least thirty people died from Vault-Tec's twisted sense of a 'better future underground'. It almost made her chuckle bitterly.
"Meilleur future, mon cul oui"
She found the sound of her voice reassuring, and swearing in her mother tongue made her feel more alive. At least, even if the frosting, defrosting, re-frosting had impaired her reasoning capacities, she could still insult people in French.
"If there are still people somewhere..."
El walked out of the room, and headed towards the end of the hallway, where a sliding door with bright red lettering indicated 'Exit zone'. But when she pushed the button, the now-familiar metallic voice rang:
"Manual emergency exit door override. Please contact your Vault-Tec maintenance representative for service".
No exit for now, she thought. Taking a few steps back, she went through the only other door of the hallway. There must be a terminal somewhere to open this putain de porte. Down a small flight of stairs, she arrived in another hallway and caught a glimpse of something she hoped was her imagination. Behind a sturdy window she saw a giant cockroach, at least the size of a big cat, wiggle its antennas before dropping to the floor out of her view.
"Merde, what was that?"
Her eyes fell on a security baton, that she immediately took and deployed. She could have otherwise taken her hunting knife out off her right boot, but that would mean taking the risk to approach these... things even closer. Not willing to stay too close from this window, nor from the door she feared to lead to the cockroach's room, she went looking for an exit in a small recess of the hallway. Quickly disappointed, she took the time to look into the terminal, hoping to find the security controls to opened that damned exit door.
Instead, she learned that her whole neighborhood, her family and herself were used as human guinea pigs by Vault-Tec. The company apparently wanted to test how unaware people reacted to being put in cryogenic stasis.
"Badly, you twisted bastards" she spat.
Apparently, all the staff of the Vault was aware of what was going on. They were supposed to monitor everything, and not allowed to save anyone who died due to the stasis, given that more than 20% of the victims were still alive. According to the terminal, Vault-Tec was asking its employees to disregard even the government's notices. The staff was supposed to stay in there for a maximum of six months. Maybe it was the reason no one was there?
The guy to whom the terminal belonged had written a few entries in it. It seemed that they waited for the all-clear so long that the food supplies got low and that the staff was beginning to turn crazy from the isolation. The last entry made it look like the security wanted to escape through the Overseer's office, who was against anyone exiting the vault. Maybe there was a riot? Anyway, she may be able to get to his office too and get out from there.
El stood away from the terminal and saw a Stimpack on the table. She saw some in movies before, where they had almost unbelievable healing capacities. Nathan told her that a Stimpack saved his life at the great battle of Anchorage, a mere handful of days before he was due to come home to her and his newborn. What should have been a deadly wound to the chest had turned to be just an impressive scar thanks to one of these beauties. Cursing to the lack of pockets on the jumpsuit, she took it in her left hand and exhorted herself to get through the door leading further in the vault.
It was another hallway, smaller this time, opening on what looked like the dining hall. And in the middle of the hallway, a cockroach. Quietly, she tried to walk past it, her back to the wall, but the giant insect detected her and ran to her with a threatening screech. Screaming in surprise, she crashed down her security baton on it, making it explode in a mess of chitin and greenish lymph.
"Ugh, disgusting..."
She wasn't used to killing animals to defend herself. Her father took her hunting from time to time when she was a teenager, but firing a hunting rifle from afar was very different from that. Besides, the stags and hares never tried to munch on her shoes.
In the dining hall, she found a terminal with a video game on it -useless-, and two doorways: one to a dormitory, and the other to a small bathroom. In the first, some of the bunk beds were overturned, as if a fight happened. Maybe her riot theory was right. Nothing else in there than the beds and a few empty cardboard boxes. In the bathroom, she found a working sink. Realizing how thirsty she was, she drank to her heart's content. Eyeing the shower curtain, she thought about it a bit before ripping it off its rod. Tearing off a few hanging strands of it, she then knotted them around her shoulder and waist, creating a sort of harness hanging at her back. It was probably the saddest excuse for a backpack she ever saw, but it allowed her to drop the Stimpack in it, along with a small glass bottle with a cork -both found in the dining hall-that she filled at the sink.
"Glass is not ze best matirial to carry your water araound, girl." she pointed, mimicking her father's tone and horrible accent.
The memories of her dad clenched her heart. But she couldn't let him down. She was going to find out what happened to her family, and why. Maybe she could even get Shaun back. She could raise him to be a fighter, like his dad and his grandpa. Refusing to consider how her hopes were thin, she continued her way in the fallout shelter.
Éléanore found the first skeleton in the generator's room, after killing a second cockroach. It was wearing the same jumpsuit as her. She hoped it wasn't bad luck. The skeleton was white and clean as if it had been here for a while. Maybe the revolt of the staff happened longer ago than she thought.
After the next hallway, she entered what she guessed was the Overseer's office. Behind a desk laid another skeleton, and on the blotter was placed a 10mm pistol, alongside some ammunition. Eagerly she grabbed it, loaded it clumsily, and felt a little bit safer. She wouldn't go far with fifteen rounds, but it was better than nothing. The door on the left wall was locked, once again.
A terminal on the desk gave her access to the Overseer's entries. It lit anger in her, reading that man's words, who seemed to consider that the people Vault-Tec experimented on were lucky, and merely more than test material. She was glad an insurrection took place -her theory war right, according to the entries, the staff hadn't liked the idea of being trapped here without food-, and wished that the remains behind hers were the Overseer's. On the terminal, she found the remote control to open the door, and it slid open.
Before she went through it, she rummaged in the office and the bedroom behind it. When she headed to the next hallway, she had forty more rounds, a few bobby pins, and an intravenous bag of Radaway. She shivered at the idea of having to slide a needle in her arm herself. She hated needles.
In the hope of not wasting any ammunition, she tried to take on the five cockroaches of the hallway with her security baton, regretting it when she got a small cut on the back of her hand and a bigger one on her calf. Damn, it hurt. She never had any real injury in the past, except for a few falls from her bicycle and that one time when she was five when she tried to re-enact Marry Poppins by jumping from a wall with an open umbrella and ended up with a broken arm. Quite the adventurer she was.
Not wanting to get infected -who knew what these things ate before trying to eat her?-, she had to turn back to wash the scratches in the sink of the Overseer's bathroom.
"I hope there are not too many of these cockroaches out there. They are nasty little things".
She, finally, made it to the entrance: the impressive Vault door was facing her. One last insect was awaiting, and this time, she put a bullet right through it. Her aim was satisfactory -the thing wasn't too far either-, but she was used to shooting in a calm state of mind, and right now she was far from calm.
El, remembering how she found the bullets, searched through the lockers of the room, and congratulated herself when she found some more. Now to the door: it was closed, and the console next to the railing informed her that she needed a 'Pip-Boy' in order to open it. She then noticed the weird cuff-thing the skeleton at her feet was wearing.
Curious, she took it, letting out a sound of disgust when the arm bones slept through it and hit the floor. She wrapped it around her own left arm, closing the metal clasp. It emitted a few beeps and clicks, before turning on, bright green letters filling the screen. Maybe that was a Pip-Boy? It seemed to inform her of her general health stuff, like heart rate, blood pressure, body heat... Under these was written: "Analysis of health data: 98% chances of high adrenaline blood rates."
"No shit, Sherlock" El muttered.
After a few minutes of fiddling through the menus -this thing had a map menu, maybe she could find a use to it-, she noticed that she could plug a wire from the cuff to the console. Doing so allowed her to access the button controlling the gate opening. She hit it with her fist, eager to get out of this glorified tomb.
With lots of sirens, revolving lights and hissing sounds, the huge gear-shaped vault door slid back and rolled to the side, letting the way open for the railing to slide through the opening.
She was getting out of here.