A/N: One commentator, to whom I cannot reply directly because they did not log in, has taken note of the episodic nature of this story and asked if I'm about to introduce an overarching plot. Nope. I'm actually getting close to the story's last destination.

Most of my fics don't have a larger "plot" other than the characters trying to stay alive. I do better with my original fiction, since I plan those out ahead of time, but the fact is that with fanfics I tend to write the whole thing based around one scene I want to write (which in this case was in Ch. 2 and 3) and sort of improv from there. I'll try to do better with the next one. ;)

21

We piled the three bodies in the clearing Fawkes had made with the gat. The one Three had killed was unmarked, except for the blood pooling under the skin on one temple. He'd been young and kind of cute, sort of the fresh-faced look that you see on boys who grow up in the towns. He also had a necklace made out of shriveled fingers. I didn't object when Three went to check through his pockets.

The creek was narrower than I had expected, never more than knee deep. The sound bounced back from the walls of the gully and magnified, making it sound bigger than it was. We washed up as best we could. Then we followed Three down a narrow trail toward the Vault. I powered up my rifle just in case. You never know what's going to come out of one of those doors once you open it.

The actual entrance was easy to miss. The rickety wooden door was overshadowed by an outcrop of rock and half-overgrown with grass. Fawkes gathered them all in one hand and yanked. They came up by the roots. The plank door offered roughly as much resistance as tissue paper, and then we stood around the doorway and stared into the shadow beyond it. There was a dusty, empty space and a big round Vault door. A little podium-like control panel stood to the left of it. There was no writing on the door, no KEEP OUT sign. I guess they'd figured if the worst happened, there'd be nobody who could read the sign anyway.

Then a red light came on, something black and shiny moved up near the ceiling, and I heard the hum of an automatic turret warming up. Fawkes reached for the gat, but he was too slow. His normal practice was to be powered up and barrel-in-hand before real trouble actually started. There was nothing much that Three could do to a Robco turret with his bare hands.

So, all things considered, it's a pretty good thing I didn't miss.

I swung the barrel away from the dripping slag, looking for another one, but apparently that was it. I lowered the plasma rifle.

"One shot," I said. "Must be a cheap model."

"There may be other such defenses inside," said Fawkes.

"I hope not," I said.

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. All the same, I would rather go first."

"Be my guest," I told him. "I'll open the door." Fawkes stepped forward with the gat's barrel leveled at the door as I went to trigger the control pad. Three kept right beside me, out of the line of sight of anything that might be behind the door. I found the main lever and pulled it.

There was no alarm whoop-whoop like a Vault-Tec vault. The door just gave a long, rattling hiss, and the round panel rolled aside into a space hidden in the wall. Metallic clangs and thunks echoed off into the distance as the old machinery worked. A puff of dry air hit my face, smelling dusty and old.

Nothing shot at Fawkes. He took a step forward. I heard the loud thoom-thoom-thoom of the lights triggering on. I felt rather than saw Three twitch at the sound.

"Wait, please," Fawkes said, and disappeared inside. I looked at Three. He stood with his arms folded tight across his chest, face white and set.

"This isn't a Vault-Tec vault," I told him. "And it's certainly not 108. There might be something ugly waiting for us in there, but it won't be anyone you know. You got that?"

"Gary," he said, but he didn't sound convinced.

Two minutes later, I heard Fawkes's heavy footsteps returning. "There is nothing alive here," he said. I stepped into the doorway and looked around. The lights threw the small entryway into harsh relief. It wasn't laid out like other vaults I'd seen. This was one plain, small room. The walls were painted white. Someone had hung a couple of pictures on the walls, and there were old-fashioned chairs gathered around a low coffee table as if it were a living room. The furniture was in perfect condition except for a thin layer of dust. There wasn't even much of that. Nothing would get in past the door seal once it was shut, and this one had been shut a long time. The big prints of Fawkes's boots were the only marking in the dust on the pale green tiles.

A big doorway in front of us (I was going to say "lead," but Fawkes says that's wrong) led to a corridor, and fifty yards or so on I could see another open door. Four other doorways, all open, lined the hall. It was spacious, big enough for Fawkes to walk comfortably even in the hall, but still...

"Looks pretty small," I said. "But then, I guess it'd be expensive to build one of these on your own dollar."

"Yes," said Fawkes. He had already hung up the gat and powered it down. "I believe it is why so many chose Vault-Tec's facilities instead. The laboratory is quite large, however. I would like to examine it while you search the other rooms."

"Sure," I said. "Be careful. No knowing what this scientist was working on."

"I will," said Fawkes. "I suggest that you close the front door."

"Good idea," I said. If Fawkes had cleared it, the Vault was safe. I was less sure of the gully outside. The bodies of the raiders might attract animals, even if there was nothing worse out there. Three watched the door until it was all the way closed, but he didn't say anything. He stayed beside me as I went down the hall to the first room on the left. It was a small kitchen. I recognized the appliances, new except for their dust. I'd seen old versions of them all over the Wasteland. There was a stove and a refrigerator, a sink with silver-bright fixtures, and a coffee machine on the pale green counter top. It had all been left ship-shape, like somebody was expecting visitors – except that it had been done so many years ago. The cupboards were painted white. Their silver handles matched the faucet and the doors of the fridge and the stove. They had only tarnished a little.

There was another doorway at the back, and the light was already on inside the pantry. It was bigger than the kitchen. Probably two or three times the size. Two of the walls were still stacked high with packages. "They were here the rest of their lives and they didn't get that far into it," I said to Three. "I wonder if something happened? I didn't feel any rads when we came in. I don't think the place is hot."

Three just nodded, looking around. He seemed a little less nervous. But then, the place was so very unlike anything Vault-Tec had ever built. This wasn't just a place to hide. It had been a home. I even found myself a little envious of those people, though they'd lived out their lives trapped in here. I'd never called a place that. Underworld was the closest thing I had, and even that had Ahzrukhal.

I found a towel in one of the drawers – it had flowers embroidered on it – and used it to open other drawers and cupboards with my raw fingers. I wouldn't ask Three to do it. He still held his arms close to his body, as if he didn't want to touch anything here. Eventually I pulled out another towel so I could set my ruck and my rifle down on the counter. In the end I found about what you'd expect from a kitchen. There were cups, plates, silverware, opened food packages in the fridge whose contents had long ago turned to dust. Nothing to interest the Brotherhood of Steel.

"Okay," I said, when I'd finished with this. I held onto the towel. "Let's have a look at the rest."

The room across the hall was a bedroom with a small bath. The double bed was neatly made with a gingham coverlet. There was a wooden dresser and a big cupboard that I guessed was for hang-up clothes. A little table with a lamp stood on either side of the bed. Again, except for the dust, someone might have just stepped out.

The bathroom had a full tub with clawed feet and a plastic shower curtain. The curtain was pulled aside, probably by Fawkes – his footprints had been here before us. There were two bodies in it. They must have taken a long time to rot in this dry, sterile atmosphere, but after all, it had been more than a hundred years. The flesh had finally fallen away from the bones, dissolved into ooze and slime and finally gone down the drain (a faint yellow-brown stain still colored the bottom of the tub around the hole). The clothes were still there, those incredibly durable fabrics people had worn before the War. They were stained, but they were intact, a pink dress draped over one skeleton and a lab coat over a shirt and tie on the other. The man had worn brown loafers. The woman had pink high-heeled shoes. I stood and looked at them for a long minute or so.

"I guess there was nowhere else to put them," I said. It seemed suddenly loud. Three stood in the doorway with his hands behind his back. The smell of dust was stronger in here, but that was the worst there was. Not even the stink of decay had survived. "They were afraid to unseal the Vault to bury them, and they couldn't leave them where they fell." I turned back to search the bedroom with my towel over my fingers. I didn't feel too bad about it. However they'd gone, they were together. There was nothing here that they would need again.

There was nothing interesting in the bedroom except a computer terminal at the desk. I turned it on. It wasn't protected by a password. They'd had no reason to fear anyone, not sealed in here as they were. There were a couple of simple games of a kind I'd seen once or twice before, and there was a journaling program. I read the first couple of entries, poking at the keys with a toweled finger. There were alternate sections from two people, a man and a woman. They'd written the first time on the day they'd moved in. They were afraid of the end of the world as they knew it, but hopeful that they might still live out their lives together – and they still had their work. The BOS had said a scientist and his wife. That wasn't what it sounded like from the diary. They were partners.

"I'll come back to that," I told Three as I stood up. "There's probably years' worth of entries in there." He nodded. After a moment I said, "Their names were Norman and Yeung Eun. I think that was them in the bathtub." He nodded again. The information didn't seem to affect him. He must not feel as I did, like a trespasser. Would these two have been angry at my reading their diaries? Or why had they kept them all those years, if not in hopes that someone else might survive the end and come and read them? Would they have been horrified to see me as I am now? I'll never know, so I'm going to pretend they wouldn't. I've read all the entries now, you see. It took me a long time, because I don't read too fast, but I did it. Norman and Yeung Eun are more real to me than you are, whoever you are (not counting Fawkes; he's still reading this over my shoulder).

The other two rooms held another bed and bath and a storage room. The other bedroom had two single beds, side by side. One had a skeleton under the covers, dressed in pajamas. The other lay fully clothed on top of the coverlet, though the rot had stained the fabric under it. He wore an outfit similar to Norman's, a shirt and tie and pants and loafers under a lab coat. There was an open plastic bottle on the night stand beside him. The lid lay in the dust next to it, and when I looked inside the bottle it was empty. Next to the lid, there was a note. I had to pick it up and blow the dust away before I could read it.

I don't think anyone will ever read this, but I have to hope they will. I have to believe that there will be a new beginning after this end.

The Drs. Gunderson have been gone a few months now. We found them together. Norman had a stroke, as best we could tell, and Yeung Eun had a heart attack when we told her. We put them in their bathtub for sanitation and shut up their room. The project was basically done. I think with that finished, they didn't really have a reason to keep going. I don't know that we did, either. I think that's why we didn't discover the leak in the lab before it was too late.

I looked up from the note, holding still as I waited for that tingle on my skin that would mean there was active contamination in the room. I didn't feel anything. And whatever the rad count was in the lab, it wouldn't hurt a super mutant. "Better take a Rad-X just in case," I told Three. "Sounds like there might be a leak."

"Might be a leak?" said Three. He dug a couple of pills out of his pocket as I went on reading.

Terry spent the whole night in there, trying to come up with something else for us to work on, tidying up the place and organizing the Gundersons' notes. Next day he was sick. Then his hair fell out, and he started to develop bleeding sores all over his body. The chems didn't do a thing for him. If a real person ever reads this, and you've ever loved someone, pray you never find out what it's like to watch them suffer without being able to help them. It's worse than dying yourself. It's worse than anything. This morning Terry died while I held his hand.

I winced at that. That's what happens to smoothskins who don't have just the right gene to become Ghouls. Radiation kills them slowly and horribly. Up until the War happened, that's what they thought would happen to everybody that was exposed. The few lucky ones, the ones whose exposure was small and brief, would just be sterile forever. Rad-X decreases the effect of radiation, and Radaway supposedly can fix it, but it must've been too late for Terry by the time he was given it.

I'm alone now. I had hoped Terry and I would grow old together here, like Norman and Yeung Eun did. This was our safe place and our sanctuary. Without him, it's just a big box underground, an oversized coffin. I've sent the robot in to plug the leak and decontaminate the lab. I guess I just hate to leave a mess behind us. I've always been a neat freak. Terry's laughed about it for as long as I've known him, from clear back in college where we met.

"Oh, so they did decon it," I said. "I guess he forgot about the turret."

"Forgot," said Three. "Gary." His tone was a little sarcastic.

I don't see the point in sitting around here waiting to die of natural causes. Wherever Terry is, that's where I belong, and that's where I'm going.

If anyone does end up reading this, do what you like with the contents of the vault, but please bury us together. I know Norman and Yeung Eun would like to be together as well.

The password for the lab terminal is PLANGENT.

Jarod Lamont

I set the note back down on the night stand. "They were a couple," I said. "I guess that explains why two men would agree to shut themselves up in here forever. I kind of wondered about that when the Paladin told it to us."

"Gary," said Three, and shrugged as if to say, We're alive, and we're here now.

"Right," I said, and went to search the room.