Chapter 8: Erga Omnis

Towards all; Refers to rights or obligations that are owed towards all.

Part 1

[Lexington]

Cities always gave Garv the creeps. He couldn't really say why, either. Maybe it was the faded old-world posters. Maybe it was the crumbling state of the buildings. Maybe it was because you couldn't rightly see what was coming. You could literally bump into trouble around the next corner and be none-the-wiser.

Lexington gave him a similarly eerie feeling. It was dead quiet in the nest of buildings but one simple noise could bounce off the walls and the faded posters, amplifying until you could never tell where it was coming from, it was simply all around you and Garv hated that - not knowing where to turn.

The walk down had been tense and quiet. Garv and Vaultie used Sturges as a buffer and avoided talking to each other unless necessary. Throughout the walk, Sturges had been increasingly attempting to get them to talk to each other, but his efforts were in vain. Garv wasn't about to be the first to apologise for their spat because he knew he'd been in the right. All along the road to Lexington he'd been waiting for an ambush - but none arrived. That didn't mean that there wasn't one coming and certainly didn't mean he was going to say sorry for attempting to kill someone who wouldn't have thought twice about killing her.

'What do you think?' Sturges asked as they sized up the massive buildings.

'I think if you're trying to make us talk, Sturges, that's not going to happen.' Garv replied as the man came up to stand beside his friend.

The handyman risked looking behind them to watch Vaultie try desperately to pry open an old, rusted Nuka-Cola dispenser, cursing all the while that it ate her money. 'She's new to this whole thing. Can't exactly blame her for reacting the way she did.' He commented in what Garv considered an unreasonable amount of reasonableness.

'She's got to learn that it's everyone for themselves in this place.' He brooded. 'That doesn't change.'

'Yeah, but she needs us, boss-man. Wouldn't last a day out there without us.'

That statement winged back to hit Garv where it hurt. Wasn't that long ago - a year or two, maybe? - that it had been said to him while he stood in the pouring rain, listening to the Colonel giving an ideological speech about saving Quincy and how they wouldn't last a day without the Minutemen - and he honestly believed it, back then. The politics had made it difficult sometimes, but he'd never stopped believing that what the Minutemen were doing was right - until Quincy. After that, ideology and morals were forced to be shelved in favour of survival. Garv learned fast - he wanted Vaultie to learn too. Mistakes, mercy - they had consequences.

There was the sound of smashing glass and both men turned to look back at Vaultie who was cleaning out shards of glass and rooting around inside the machine. She eventually pulled out a miraculously unscathed Nuka Cherry and smiled.

They looked back at each other and Sturges waggled an eyebrow. 'We are clearing out Corvega, then we're going back to Libertalia.' Garv warned him. 'Without Vaultie.'

'You saying you're gonna kill her?' Sturges asked in surprise. They knew other raiders sometimes did it. Sometimes conspired to get rid of the third wheel in the plans - especially when it came to Caps.

'No.' Garv replied and began a march towards a large, squat building. 'I wouldn't waste the ammo.'

The streets of Lexington were mostly silent and abandoned. Jared and his group were only ever interested in Corvega and only ever protected the plant. They left the streets to the ferals. Super Duper Mart would have been Garv's ideal staging point before the actual attack on Corvega that had gone horribly wrong. It had resources and - more importantly - it had been close by the plant itself. Unfortunately, there were far too many ferals to justify it and they had chosen somewhere else. Now, however, he was counting on there being some goodies - food, medical supplies, ammo - to help them.

'I used to shop here.' Thea murmured as Garv nosed open the rusted doors with his musket. 'It's gone downhill.' She commented quietly. Garv ignored the joke as Sturges chuckled nervously.

The air tasted dry and dusty. Like an old room that hadn't been aired in years and left to moulder in it's own time-capsule. A throwback to history. At first glance, the main floor seemed empty of everything but delinquent shopping trolleys and battered cans of Cram. The posters littered around the room had been torn - presumably by the skeletons left lying in the aisles like some gruesome halloween decorations.

Vaultie reached out to touch one of the old skulls but Sturges grabbed her arm. 'Wouldn't touch that if I were you.' He warned.

'Why not?' She argued.

'Darlin' it's disrespectful.' He answered. 'And those bodies are probably only held together with dust. You want to know how much noise a skull makes when it hits the ground? Plenty to ferals.'

'They're just lying here.' She whispered. 'Why hasn't anyone buried them?'

'Too many bodies and no-one to remember them.' Sturges answered, unusually sombre.

Only more bodies get added to the pile. Garv knew this as much as anyone else. 'We're going to head for the stockroom.' He ordered. 'Ammo and medical supplies first, food second.' He didn't honestly hold out too much hope that the front of the shop would hold anything spectacular. It was probably one of the first to be raided. The back however - He surmised that the dark and enclosed storage room and offices would hold the best stuff and the ferals. Ferals loved dark and enclosed. Nobody had ever figured out why.

The last time he'd been anywhere near here it had looked far too cramped for his tastes - with a team of nine people - but three might be able to manage it if they were careful not to rile the ghouls.

Sturges and Thea nodded. She pulled the shiny new toy off her back and slowly began follow him down the aisles towards a pair of battered doors with a chipped metal plate that read Delicatessen.

He heard her whispering to Sturges 'What are ferals?' Her lack of knowledge was astounding.

'Feral Ghouls. They're poor irradiated bastards that were unlucky enough not to die outright.' He explained gently. 'Normal ghouls - well they're all there in the brain if you get me. Almost normal. Just real damn unlucky. Ferals - radiation's sent 'em good and nuts. They'll attack anything - anyone - that makes the slightest noise. Last we were in here, it was full to the brim. I think Garv wants to try and be sneaky. So hush.'

She nodded in understanding, her fingers wrapped tightly around the pump action grip. The questions, thankfully, stopped there.

It was eerily quiet now. He didn't like that. The shelves had mostly been cleared - especially anything to do with medical supplies and ammo. A few products had survived the onslaught but nothing worth picking over. Garv contented himself that he'd made the right call. The good stuff would always be hidden away. Stood to reason - and with the feral problem here pretty evidential, it would be unlikely that anyone stuck around long enough to try a run at the stockroom.

They were just creeping up on the counters and the double doors when a sound caught his ear. It sounded like squeaking wheels. His head turned sharply, his breath still when he heard the crash of a trolley into an old metal shelving unit. Vaultie had paused, cringing. She'd obviously nudged it, it had limped straight into a display and made one hell of a felt the anger bubbling up but shouting might have attracted more attention than the trolley had at this point. All three were holding their breath, waiting.

Garv strained his ears, trying to tune out Vaultie's whispered, hurried apologies and focus on that warning noise - the hissing. Ferals may have had their brains fried by radiation but they still had enough to follow a set pattern. Noise would rouse them, they would search and when they'd located something to attack, they hissed to draw the others - like a pack of dumb but persistent dogs.

A few seconds ticked by. Ten, twenty - maybe they'd gotten away with it.

To Garv's everlasting horror, a hand appeared and slammed down on a counter not too far away as a feral reared up. It smelled even worse than it looked. Not quite as bad as the sewer Deathclaw had smelled, but a powerful stink of decay, rot, and filth.

'Oh shit, is that a feral?!' Vaultie gasped causing the moment of surprise to pass. The feral reacted by hissing loudly and several answering cries were given from behind them.

Garv reacted by smacking it in the mouth and bringing the musket up to shoot. He answered with 'Imma kill you if the ferals don't first, Vaultie!' The shout echoed around the room, eliciting more fierce hissing from behind them.

It was blocking the doors, trying to reach over and grab him, despite the deep cuts in it's face and neck. Garv cranked a shot and put it down. He jumped as he heard the boom of Firecracker and smelled the burning flesh - evidently more were coming in from behind them - but was prepared to ignore it for now, as long as she didn't hit him or Sturges. With the feral dead, he leapt towards the door. Locked. Of course it was.

He rummaged for any bobby pins he had on him and attacked the lock as more shots were going off over his head. It was hardly ideal - he needed to concentrate for Atom's sake -

'The ferals really don't like Firecracker!' Vaultie yelled above the shots.

'Good for you!' Garv snarled back as he wrestled with the 200 year old lock. It was being stubborn. 'Keep them off me!'

'I would but - uh - I'm running out of shotgun shells!' She replied like someone delivering some potentially bad news.

Fantastic. He needed to get the door open that much quicker. Thank Atom that Vaultie didn't need to be a particularly good shot with that shotgun. Anything that wasn't close enough to take a powerful shredding hit and die immediately was set on fire and finished off by the flames. Come on - come on -

The lock yielded.

Swift as he could, he wrenched open one of the doors and yelled 'Sturges! In!'

The handyman pulled his musket up sharply and fell back, leaving Vaultie to control the stragglers. Garv pulled around his own musket and began firing. 'Vaultie! Get in the damn door, now!'

She looked like she was about to argue but turned and jumped the counter before running into the relative safety of the gloom beyond. He slid back into the doorway, firing as he went before he could slam and lock the door again.

The three stood and breathed for a bit, listening to the ferals slam themselves again and again into the wood.

'Boss-man, before you lose your rag-' Sturges breathed.

'Can nothing go fucking right for once?!' He cut Sturges off with a snarl.

'Apparently not.' Vaultie replied as she checked her clip of shotgun ammo.

'I wasn't talking to you!' Garv snapped. 'I don't need an inexperienced newbie try to kill me before I get to Corvega! That's twice now! If this is how it's gonna be - maybe we should call off this whole deal. Why don't you run on back to your vault? Huh?'

'I would!' She agreed angrily. 'But they're all dead you giant jerk-off!'

That made Garv shut his mouth. He hadn't known they were dead - she hadn't gotten further than pre-war and looking for her son when they were trapped in Concord. How was he supposed to know that everyone else in that vault was dead?

Vaultie's back hit the filthy crumbling wall and she looked a decade older than she did the previous day at that exact moment. 'They're all dead. Everyone but my son. Is that what you want to hear?' She murmured. 'Someone killed my husband and everyone else in there and then stole my son.' Garv winced at the mention of husband. She'd never mentioned a husband either. He had never asked what happened in there - to ask now would be just a bigger fuck up. An awkward silence had fallen, interspaced by the loud thumps and scratches on the door.

'Maybe we should move.' Sturges suggested in the awkwardness. Garv immediately seized the opportunity, rather than watch Vaultie's face crumble some more.

'Yeah.' He agreed and stalked off up the left corridor.

A/N: This chapter was so large I had to break it down into two manageable chunks. I didn't think my readers would enjoy a 4,000 word or so novella for one chapter. Who knows, maybe you do, but I know I myself can barely hold on that long sometimes. Vaultie's genius plan to get Garv killed continues! Or at least - Garv thinks so. Methinks he puts too much on the lady's shoulders too soon. That bit him right in the ass, didn't it?