Hey guys. Another pretty long wait. But it's all good, just busy with my real life, ya know. :)
This is an optional end to the story for me. I might continue, I might not. I probably will, but if I don't, I have a pretty cool idea for another fanfic that might be more successful.
Also, from now on, the story is called "A Child of the Box - Vault 123." Cuz it's cooler than the last name.
Anyways, I don't own the copyright to Fallout, Bethesda does, yada yada yada. Enjoy this chapter, and please review!
May 16, 2284 – 7:34 pm
I stayed by Kooza's side for hours, talking about this and that while the medical staff slowly began to remove the bandages from his leg. Not once did we mention why he acted as he did – for all anybody knew, the man in the bed was perfectly fine, aside from the injury that he was there for, of course.
So we both remained as casual as possible in our conversations. We talked about the vault, about the caravan, about Port Bradley, and Harri. His time in the hospital had been short, but I learned that he'd already managed to charm one of the nurses the day before, and tripped an annoying doctor without anyone seeing. His leg, once opened from its wrappings, looked relatively normal, though grey with a long stitched-up scar where the claw had been removed. When the leg was completely free, Kooza stared at it for some time until I spoke up about the weather.
Harri came at about quarter to seven, and was surprised to see me. I was supposed to meet them at the docks, but she did consider that this made things much easier. Her caravan was outside, and I was to watch it while Harri sorted out some paperwork and wheeled Kooza out on a wheelchair. Once they were out of the eye and earshot of the doctors, the French mercenary jumped out of his seat and hobbled over to the wagon with pride. He sat on top, of course, while I walked beside the Brahmin on our way to the port of Port Bradley.
So now I sat. Alone. Waiting for our trip upriver to be sorted out. Kooza had a buddy on another ship and promised to be back in ten minutes. It had been twenty- five; I counted.
The docks were a magnificent display of maritime activity, harboring hundreds of
boats ranging from Pre-War motorboats to ferries to a huge inactive battleship serving as a military fort. Along the coast of the harbor were fishing and shipping businesses, taverns, and even a sailing rental, which appeared to be closing down soon if not already. In front of me were the ferry docks, holding lines to four medium-sized vessels that provided trips for anyone who wished to pay. Upon arrival, Harri had told me all about them.
"There are three local ferries that go up and down the river for tourists, caravans, and other travelers. The Queen Mary 5, the largest and the one we're taking, the Wooden Lurk, owned by this Scotsman McAvoy, and occasionally the Duchess Gambit, which goes international. That one right there," she pointed to a smaller boat at the end, "is a Quebeckan ferry called Lawrence's Yacht, down for a rare trading mission. None of these ships charge much and have plenty of room for everyone, so it's pretty much a done-deal. I also like to share with my fellow passengers, if you know what I mean. That's the name of the game."
And so the game has been played, and was being played right now. Harri had approached the Queen Mary 5 with confidence, and was probably using her wily bartering skills to strike a better deal for the ride, and earn some cheap tickets. I got the easy job: sit in one place and watch the stuff. Easy, for sure.
Every single person that walked by looked like a thief ready to nab whatever they wanted behind my back. No doubt that many believed that they could take on the 15-year old guard holding a lever-action rifle on his lap. They probably thought they were better trained, better armed, and better prepared. They were probably right. Nonetheless, I sat vigilant over the wares, locked and loaded, ready to shoot the head off of the first person to make a mistake. Their skulls had no match against my bullet, and their friends would be sure to remember it…
Lost in my imaginary match against an imaginary shoplifter, I nearly shot off the face of the red-haired woman who poked me in the back. Both of us were startled, and I gathered everything together clumsily.
"M-may I help-p you?" I stuttered. The woman was tall and freckled, and looked to be in her early twenties. Even though a gun had just been pointed in her face, she wore a permanent smirk like she knew what to do and everyone else didn't. Plus, she had gathered herself quicker than I had.
"Um, yeah. You can, actually," the woman answered. "This is Harri Harith's shop, right?"
"Yes, it is."
"Is she around?"
I didn't know who this woman was or what she wanted, and even though Harri might know her, I couldn't exactly leave to report that a friend was here. Someone, even this woman, might steal something and I couldn't let that happen. So, I replied with something vague enough not to sound mean.
"She's… around," I told her, waving my arms in each direction. "But I'm really not sure where."
The red-haired woman looked disappointed. "Oh okay. Just tell her that Nadine wants her launcher back."
"Sure. Anything else?"
"Nope, that's all I wanted. Thanks, and don't forget!"
And with that she ran off and boarded the Duchess Gambit, which quickly dropped her lines and headed out with its passengers in no more than a few minutes. Coincidentally, Harri returned a very short time after those few minutes, denying her the pleasure of talking to Nadine by a hair.
"So…" she started, holding up three tickets. "Ready to get going?"
"Well, I am, at least. Kooza has to get back from his buddy on some other ship."
Harri groaned. "Oh, c'mon. He's not visiting Kiernan again, is he?"
"I dunno."
She shook her head and left down the south end of the harbor, disappearing amongst the crowd. Not much later, she led a whimpering Kooza back by his ear, and practically threw him against the wagon.
"I leave for what, half an hour, and you get drunk with Kiernan again! And the doc said no alcohol for a week! But what else did I expect?!"
She was yelling, but smiling as well.
May 16, 2284 – 8:07 pm
At last, I found the real jumpsuits. Once we had boarded the Queen Mary 5, we were told that the ship would be leaving at nine that night. Then, one by one, they boarded. Will, Adam, Victoria, then Jon. Each with their own trader to protect. Will had a junk dealer named Wroclaw, Adam was following a traveling chemist whom everyone calls Dr. Quack and his 'assistant' Orwell, and Victoria had been paired up with a missionary from the Abbey of the Road, Sister Kathryn. Jon was the unlucky guy who got Yahoo the slaver, and he already appeared physically sick of looking at all of the naked bodies, some skinless, inside that wagon-cage.
We greeted each other briefly, but really didn't make much of an effort to converse. All of the wagons were left in a big open space on the bottom, covered with tarps, while the passengers gathered on the second floor – a roofed, two-walled little area, the front and back open to the elements, with about a dozen beds lining the walls. Before long, each person on the boat had claimed his or her own bed. I managed to get the one at the end, somehow. If it rained, I would get wet.
Eventually, we were all unpacked. Harri told us that it was a full one-day trip by boat, but that was a good alternative to the three-day trip by foot. Two if you run the whole way. There would be a lot of sitting around and maybe "sightseeing," but boredom was a hundred times better than being ripped apart by the Congregation, or the Super Mutants that inhabited the area around this old school, Suffield Academy. I kinda wanted to see a Super Mutant for myself; to see it rip apart a car and throw it at something, and make it explode. But it was always "too unsafe" or "far too great the risk" or whatever. The Super Mutants were too great, it seemed, for Daniel Laird Boone of Vault 123.
I lay down on my bed to wait the half an hour for the captain to return. In fact, sleep seemed like a very good idea. I closed my eyes and relaxed, thinking about home. About Mom, Overseer Krakauer, Jessie and Janey, Will and Chief Matheson. I was about the reach the hand of Mr. Nikitin as I accepted my high school diploma, the entire town clapping joyously, when a rustling from my left shook me from such fantasies.
Above me was the beaming, bubbly face of Victoria Ivanitski. She was pretty tall, but her blond hair was hanging uncomfortably close to my mouth, and her smile was a little too happy.
"Hey," she said suddenly.
"Um, hey?" I managed to utter. Victoria laughed and stood up, showing just how far she had to bend down to reach the bed's height.
"Your face was hi-lar-i-ous. No idea what the heck I was doing," she giggled. I chuckled a little to show that I wasn't totally out of it, and was going to speak up, but she beat me to it.
"So, how's your es-cor-tee?" She seemed to like to enunciate her syllables.
"Harri?" I asked. She nodded. "She's good. Really nice to just about everyone, and a wicked shot with any gun. You know she slaughtered a Deathclaw on the way here?'
"What's a Deathclaw?" I felt like she just punched me in the face. My whole experience out here was about trading, shooting, and that Deathclaw.
"You didn't see two big legs sticking out of the ground on the way over?"
"No-ope."
"Huh…" I was, as my mom would say, highly confuzzled. "Well, anyway. How's your person, Sister Kathryn?"
Victoria groaned exaggeratedly. "Bo-ring. All she does is give 'holy water' to sick people and preach about God. I get to protect the bi-bles that she hands out. She won't even let me eat meat!"
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah! It's not like there's a whole lot of veg-e-ta-tion out here, ya know. At least she's okay about fish… the two-headed kind."
"Ew."
"You got that right."
I thought for a moment. "What are you going to be doing in Stony Knoll?"
"Oh," Victoria concentrated on the ceiling, as if it would help her remember. "I know that there's a really big church there, and we'll be visiting that place for… something. Like re-stock-ing on bibles, or holy water or what-ev-er."
"So, is there anything you like about Sister Kathryn?" I asked, chuckling.
She laughed with me. "Well, she's a really good sto-ry-tel-ler… when it's not a passage from the Old Tes-ta-ment. She likes to tell tales of her sister Mar-cel-la, who died a few years ago down south. I've heard pretty much eve-ry-thing about her – she was one kick-ass nun."
We cracked up at the thought of a Sister wielding a huge gun in the face of some evil. That would make for a good comic book: "THE NUN FROM HELL." Haha.
After that there was some small talk about the last couple of days, the people we've met, things we've seen. Throughout the conversation, Victoria would throw in some jokes about Sister Kathryn, and we laughed about them until she came up from the lower deck, gave Yahoo a serious glare, and sat just a couple of beds away. Then the jokes stopped, and she called Victoria to her so that something could be done.
So, I explored the boat as thoroughly as I could. I found the cabin, which was empty except for the wheel, a chair, and a radio. There was a small storage closet that held some mementos, including a signed framed picture of a Pre-War Red Sox player, Todd Howard, and a completely preserved acoustic guitar with a sign on it: "Touch and you die." I didn't touch it.
Downstairs was a working restroom, but when I opened the door it was occupied by Adam, who seemed to be vomiting a little bit. He heard me and turned around.
"Ah," he recognized me. "Danny. What's uh… ugh…" He turned back to the toilet and heaved his dinner into the can. When he appeared to be finished, I approached him cautiously.
"Hey, are you okay Adam?"
"Do I look okay?" he replied bitterly.
"Well, no. But what's wrong?"
The boy groaned and tried to face me again. His face was devoid of color and his eyes bloodshot. "The doc gave me this stuff when we left town – said it would help me become more aware. It was just like an asthma inhaler I would use anyways, but it made me feel great… until this morning. Now that medico bastard can't find anything to help me, and I've been sick like this all day."
"Ouch," I replied. He really did look messed up. "Do you remember the name of the stuff he gave you?"
Adam just shook his head. "The dude just told me to take it so that I could think better on the road. And it helped me see, I could pretty much sense that Raider trailing us. But it was only good for a day."
"Do you need anything?"
"Well, if you can find a popsicle to cool my throat, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'll stay here and stare into this hole."
I nodded as Adam swung his head back to the toilet and spat out a big wad of chunky spittle, and he just sat there breathing heavily. So, I closed the door and let him be.
Just outside that door were all the wagons sitting next to one another – Harri's wagon filled with nothing but guns and ammo, Dr. Quack's caravan carrying box upon box of medicinal supplies, and Wroclaw's little cart of random trash, which the man was leaning on right now. He was bald and missing an eye, but didn't bother to wear an eye patch. A homemade cigar stuck out of his lips, and he puffed casually with his one eye following me as I made my way towards the back of the boat.
At the end was the largest wagon – the tarp-covered cage. I heard coughing and whispers inside, but didn't dare to lift it for fear of being met by an unforgiving face. Instead, I walked silently around it to the stern, where I expected to find anybody at all except Jon. When he saw me step into the light, his head rose for an instant, and then fell back down again.
"Hey, man," I tried to start. But he just shook his head and turned from me. I had no idea what was going on, or what he was thinking, so I just sat on the same bench and sighed.
"Are you feeling okay, Jon?" I asked.
"No." A one-word answer.
"Why?"
The poor guy just looked soulfully at the cage in front of us. After a long moment of silence, I was about to speak, but Jon beat me to it.
"Why did I get paired up with this?" he asked, but not exactly to me.
"Um, what?"
"Why did I have to get the ugliest job out of the bunch, huh?" I had no idea how to respond, so I let him continue.
"It's freaking ridiculous, looking after something like this. Yahoo has no idea what the hell he's doing with them."
"Are you talking about the slaves?"
"Yeah," he sighed. "The son of a bitch specializes in Ghoul slavery. What a moron. It's not like they'll be of much help."
"Whaddya mean?"
"The Ghouls used to be people, just like anyone else. But the fuckin' radiation pretty much killed everything that made them, that keeps them healthy… I hate looking at them everyday! It makes me sick, and I can't eat with their skull-faces in my head."
"They're just the unlucky ones. They can't be expected to be the prettiest or the most able."
"So why in the world would you want one as a slave? Their arms'll fall off and their heads'll roll and you'll have wasted money. They deserve better than torture."
"They deserve freedom from all of this, I'll bet."
"Exactly. They've suffered enough. Just put them out of their fuckin' misery."
"Wait, what?"
"They're entire lives are just endless torture, and eventually they become nothing more than mindless hissing zombies roaming the subways. If they'll find any solitude, they'll find it in a dignified death."
"Hold up," I was astonished. "You want to kill them?"
He looked at me dead in the eye, and spoke with absolute certainty. "It's a million times better than what they've got."
May 16, 2284 – 9:01 pm
The captain finally boarded with a huge backpack and a female friend, and got up in front of everybody on the second floor. He introduced himself as "Rook, though a few call me Rocky, and my best pals call me Checkmate for some reason." Then he gave all the rules of the boat (don't defile it and I won't defile you, which was creepy) and told everyone that we would be setting off immediately.
In no time, the ropes were all untied and dropped, and the ferry began to rattle with its engine. A large one must've powered the massive hulk of the boat, because it was moving faster than a nearby motorboat when we'd reached the open water of the harbor.
Once we'd past a few buildings sticking up out of the river, and a factory smokestack with a sign on it that said "This used to be Palisado," the boat turned and made it's way north. I couldn't see Springfield from here, but that was unsurprising. It'd be a day or two until we reached Agawam's pier.
The boat had the hugest spotlight I'd ever seen mounted on the front, cutting straight through the darkness of the night so that Rook could see. With it, we'd regularly spot different landmarks: the top of a sunken drawbridge, a PT boat crushed on some rocks, the tail of an airplane that didn't quite make it to Bradley in time. Occasionally, we'd pass small lights from houses, mostly on the west side. Harri said that they were usually villages branching off of the major cities, or people living alone.
As time wore on, we had our supper of mole rat on a stick and mutfruit, and then quietly started to doze off. At least, the kids did. The adults all gathered around a table and played Oh Hell, with the exception of Sister Kathryn. Harri was telling a tale of how she escaped a Reaver prison in New York in a straitjacket, while I noticed Orwell slide some cards, but I didn't bother telling anybody. The next thing I knew I woke up to a dark boat, Kooza's rhythmic breathing in the bed next to mine.
Everyone was asleep on the Mary 5 - even Rook in the corner while his girl drove on sleepily - except for a lone figure leaning against the railing. His hunched back displayed a proud 123, gleaming in the light of the nearly full moon above, and his Pip-Boy shone happily into the darkness. He wasn't paying any attention to it. All of his focus was directed out onto the barren landscape beyond, analyzing each dark rock and crevice.
My body pulled itself out of bed while my mind stayed put on my pillow. Eventually, it woke up too, and followed me as I tiptoed towards the boy at the railing. When my mind caught up, and jammed itself in its rightful place, I realized who he was.
"Will?" The boy turned his head to me, sighed, and looked back out.
"Hey Danny," Will mumbled.
I asked, "What're you doing out here?"
"Just lookin' around is all."
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I am." He honestly didn't look what I would call "okay." Later on, I might have called him high. He was neither – rather, Will seemed soulful. I was thinking that maybe he went through something tough on his way to Port Bradley, and was going to leave him to that and go back to sleep, but I hesitated a single second. And in that second, he sighed again and spoke to me.
"Have you looked at the world yet, Dan?"
I was thrown aback. I thought of a few deep reasons to his question, and answered the literal one. "I've been looking at this world for more than a year now." Come to think of it, my response was pretty deep as well.
"Then you know," Will continued, "that it's gone to Hell."
"I can imagine it better, if that's what you mean."
The young guard spun around and looked at me straight in the eye with a hopeful smile. "Exactly, Danny! You can imagine better! Everyone could imagine it better." Then he turned back to the open landscape and opened his arms.
"This place could be so much better, but no one is willing to try." Will's arm twisted over to an intact boat lying on the shore. "Someday, that ship could sail again, bringing back fish and food to hungry people." Then to a small outcrop on the shore. "There's a perfect spot for a… a home, a village. And just behind it is fertile-enough land for those willows to grow, so why not farmland?" He chuckled and kept looking. "We can build cities, communities again. When Agawam is done with slavery, it'll open up more freedom to this world and we can really rebuild." His eyes met mine once more. "They've been waiting years for that Vault to open and release New Eden. What will the world say when a bright new generation comes out with an understanding of both Pre-War and Post-War? When our trees and soil spread across this wasteland and make it green again?"
By now, he's breathing heavy, finally able to tell someone about his revelation. His speech done for now as he collected himself, I told him, "It would be great. But it would take a very long time."
"I know." Will calmed himself down. "I'm sorry, I'm too excited, but… in the Vault, I didn't think I'd ever be anything. I knew that I was destined to be one of those guards that skulks the halls at night, finding that nothing is out of place, and yet still patrolling. I was destined for something that ten other guys would have, and I wouldn't be happy."
My voice came out. "And now?"
"Now… I have something to do. Something to be. I can help in the rebuilding of the world, not the punishment of a kid who ran too quickly in a stairwell. Do you know what my dream became when I opened those files they found on the Goddard bones?"
"What?"
Will smiled. "I wanted to revive the World's Fair. Just think about it. There's got to be other people out there. I know that Africa wasn't hit hard like America. Imagine a convention, where all these people from different societies meet and share their culture, their faiths and traditions. I wanna make a fair where people can taste Cajun cooking and watch Irish dancing in the same place again. I wanna see everyone discover and understand these people and their world."
"That'd be amazing," I simply said. And he nodded. Will was a visionary, a dreamer. Perhaps his dreams were far-fetched, perhaps some of them would never be done, but he dreamed all the same. I remember reading about a Dr. King who had a dream, and it came true. Maybe his would as well. So we just stared into the water, watching it rush by beneath us, and I thought that the world would be okay with guys like Will. The more people like him, the faster the Dark Ages would end, and the world would be good.
Will's smile disappeared for a moment as he stared hard into the water. "Did you see that?"
"See what?" I asked.
"Something dark, below the boat."
I strained to make something out, but all I noticed was the shimmering water and a reflection of the moon. All was serene, even if the river was polluted.
Suddenly there was a small lurch to the boat. Victoria fell out of her bed and yelped in surprise, but she was quickly drowned out by a new noise - one I'd never heard before and would never like to hear again. It was some sort of screeching roar, like a dying vulture, a defensive lion, and a screaming banshee all in one voice. Our hands were over our ears involuntarily, and by now the entire boat was awake. Rook began to run across the rows of beds with extreme worry in his eyes, and a shotgun in his hand.
"Oh shit , shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" he panted before he leaned over the railing and screamed at the top of his lungs "MONTAUK!!!"
As if on cue in some bad action movie, a humongous claw reached out from the water and struck the ship from the side, crushing the beds where Orwell and Dr. Quack had previously been sleeping. I heard an amazing amount of screaming on the level below us, and I had a bad feeling that the slaves weren't going to be very lucky tonight.
Rook's shotgun did nothing against the bulletproof scale of this giant monster, whose hand still rested on the boat. In a flash, Harri sprinted downstairs and came up with a similar rocket launcher, except this one had what looked like a small nuclear warhead sitting in the back. Once at the arm, she pointed it down to the body of the beast and fired.
A roar larger than the first one echoed into my eardrums, and the first thing I saw after the blast was Will's face, shouting something that no one could hear. And a head rose from the water, some sort of beaked creature, hitting the boat as hard as it could. I remember it crushing Wroclaw dead on, and Will was somewhere under it. The wood shot off in all directions, the beds soaring into the air, then the water.
And then I flew. For a moment I saw the bright moon and time seriously stopped. I didn't feel like I was falling. I wanted to keep looking at that moon, who must brag to it's twin in the water about it's beauty, but then the streak of a missile cut across the whiteness of Earth's satellite, and I fell once again. At first it was cold. But then it was warm. And finally, I wasn't quite sure what I felt. Maybe nothing.
- The battleship in the harbor is the U.S.S. Sterling Calvert, a relatively newer ship before the war.
- The factory along Palisado is an actual mill that's around today, and one of the only buildings in the neighborhood not sitting in a heap at the bottom of a crater. Port Bradley's harbor was only made possible because Palisado was ripped apart by the bombs, and the hills were annihilated to below sea level, flooding the area.
- The famous/ infamous Montauk Monsters found on Long Island recently were said to be a biological experiment on the island of Montauk, which is controlled by the U.S. government and used as a military base. This beast in the water is the Fallout universe's experiment gone wrong.