Mutatis Mutandis 24
The mutant fell to the ground, a three-round cluster in the back of its head. Its four companions, far too slow on the uptake, joined it in a matter of seconds. Jason lowered the Perforator and allowed himself a smile. Superior speed had always been one of his strongest advantages over the mutants, and his journey westward had soon found him nipping at the heels of stragglers from the routed mutant army. He had killed thirteen already, and was running out of targets; the smarter ones had run south, removing themselves from his path. He was going to have to hunt them later. It was also long past time he checked on Tenpenny Tower. How well could that building have fared? Had it undergone a siege as well?
The Western half of the capital wasteland was a relatively clear place. It had never seen much activity aside from the occasional Radscorpiom, or Yao Guai. Even the muties tended to leave it alone most of the time. There was nothing of value there. Not on the surface, anyway. Yet it was one of Jason's favorite wandering spots. He enjoyed the solitude provided by the remote location, yet it lacked the constant danger of the Northern wilderness. So long as one kept an eye out and stayed off the main roads, it was very nearly safe. As safe as any place outside a settlement could be.
It was a good place to be if one wanted to remain out of the spotlight. Perfect for the quieter raider bands, the Lone Wanderer, and the children of Little Lamplight.
He had stumbled upon Little Lamplight almost a year out of the vault. He had been in pursuit of the G.E.C.K. at the time, but the place had fascinated him. Before the war, it had been a tourist attraction offering spelunking opportunities, a small museum, and even a restaurant area, all underground. The theme park had a certain charm to it, and it had made fairly good money off of both tourists and local residents.
After the bombs dropped, the cave had been annexed by the school children caught there. They had made it a home. Adults weren't usually allowed, yet they managed to keep their numbers up by feeding off of what the Raiders left behind.
The Anarchist lifestyle which the Raiders followed meant that nearly everything was allowed, including rape and sex whenever and wherever the participants felt like acting on their impulses. The lack of protection inevitably led to pregnancies. The lack of proper care inevitably led to the deaths of the mothers, their children, or both. Yet every so often a child would survive. Babies were a burden, and if they weren't killed by their parents, they were discarded. Thrown in dumpsters, or simply laid down in the wasteland for the nearest Yao Guai to chew on. Sometimes the scouts of Little Lamplight made it there first. It didn't matter to the raiders. All they knew was that the problem had vanished into the night.
The hardiness of Little Lamplight's inhabitants impressed Jason. They were foul-mouthed, foul-smelling, and ill-dressed. Yet they had a special sort of grit and determination which even many adults in the Wasteland lacked. The children lacked the numbers and strength to take most of the Wasteland's dangers head-on. They had found ways to work around it instead, and Jason had learned a thing of two about stealth from them.
The cave's entranceway looked clear enough, though that didn't mean much; if the mutants had come for the children, they would have entered through Murder Pass, the labyrinthine cave system connecting Little Lamplight to Vault 87. There were a few windswept mutant footprints in the sand-covered parking lot outside. It looked as if their patrols had passed by without any investigation.
He headed down the dusty pathway and gently slid the wooden door open, keeping his rifle down; the kids were apt to shoot most visitors, and he hated getting shot. They kept the immediate section of tunnel dark, so that passersby would remain unaware of their cave hideout. Jason did not start to worry until he found the first lamppost. The lantern was out. Normally they were kept lit, aided by the string of Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. Either they were having generator issues, or something more sinister was happening.
Being the cautious fighter he was, Jason immediately assumed the latter and checked his weapons. The Lone Wanderer was no stranger to darkness. He owned the night, as pompous as that sounded. Hunting in the dark was his favorite violent activity, and he knew how to move silently. He kept his Perforator assault rifle up and melted into the shadows, following the narrow tunnel into the entry chamber, where his fears were confirmed. All the lamps were out, save for a slow-burning fire in one corner, throwing red light and dancing shadows across the nearby walls. The Lamplight gate, the Children's final defense, had been bashed to pieces. Half of it was dangling awkwardly by its single remaining hoist chain. Their office building was a pile of warm charcoal.
Jason stayed silent for a few seconds, listening to the dull white noise of the cave, and the crackling of the fire. Water dripped in the distance, but there was something more there. A pattering noise resembling barefooted children. It was moving very quickly, and faded to echo before he could make out anything further.
He moved further into the cave system, searching cautiously for the children, and trying to prepare himself for the worst. As he moved, that scrabbling echo moved as well, never quite fading away. The walls pressed in upon him as he reached a stalagmite-dotted intersection. The light was faint, and he could barely make out the signs directing him to either the Great Chamber, or the Souvenir Shop.
A strange pattern caught his eye. Impaled on one of the lower stalagmites was a long piece of cloth. The sleeve was from a set of pyjamas. By holding it up against the light, he could just make out the pattern of tiny starships which dotted the dirty, bloodstained fabric. Jason gritted his teeth and reconsidered his options. The Shop was closer to Murder Pass, and his ultimate goal of Vault 87, but he couldn't leave without finding out what happened to the children. He decided to take the left path to the Lamplighter's central cavern, dodging his way through the darkness.
A short trek later brought him upon the flooded chamber. In the past, it had been converted to a sort of underground café where all the children had gathered to eat and drink and carouse. They had built pontoon platforms to rest on the surface of the pools. All that remained were a few errant scraps of wood, tapping gently against the rocky walls of the chamber.
Now patches of glowing moss dotted the ceiling, lending light to the still waters of the cavern. The pools were bottomless black pits. Who knew how large they were. For all Jason knew, there was an entire flooded cave system scattered across the wasteland. The D.C. area was certainly porous enough to allow it. Was he only seeing the tip of the iceberg?
The only route to the other side was a narrow bridge, crossing the frigid waters, and Jason felt his apprehension grow as he noted the slight ripples spreading from some shadowy place on the far side of the flooded chamber. That faint scrabbling noise was joined by the sound of water lapping at the edges of the narrow bridge.
Jason lowered his assault rifle and shouldered it, pulling out his sawed-off shotgun instead. He took a few cautious steps out onto the narrow bridge. Off to his left a few bubbles rose to the pond's still surface, and popped. He froze, shotgun fixed on that location. Counting to one-hundred, he relaxed, ever-so-slightly, and took a few more steps forward.
His foot crunched on something plastic. Keeping his shotgun leveled at the dark waters, he bent to one knee and felt for the object. It was a pair of tiny children's spelunking goggles, worn by more than a few of the Little Lamplighters.
Behind him, something splashed, spattering frigid droplets across the bridge. Reflexively, Jason turned and blasted at the epicenter, giving it both barrels. All at once, the water grew still, allowing the echoes to fade away. The scrabbling noise on the edge of hearing ceased as well.
Jason took a deep breath, and let it out, searching the impenetrable darkness for a target.
Suddenly, the entire bridge jerked sideways, very nearly throwing him into the pool. It began to sink, and the turbulent waters slithered towards him across the slick stone surface. Caught at the center of the rapidly shrinking bridge, Jason bolted for the far end as fast as he could. The stone structure began to slide sideways, twisting, making balance on the slippery stone even more difficult. Five feet from the far end, his ankles were underwater, and something else, something slippery, was closing around them, trying to catch him and drag him to the depths below. As his footing slipped away, Jason threw all of his strength into a desperate leap for the far bank.
He landed on the edge of the stone platform and scrambled to safety, listening to the frothing water as it sucked the bridge into oblivion. He twisted around onto his back, feeling the rough stone scratch his duster, and pointed his shotgun at the water, which once again was growing unnaturally still.
Breathing hard, he rose to his feet, keepin g a close eye on the bottomless pools. Stepping carefully, he backed his way up the tunnel's slope and away from the flooded chamber.
A foul stench swept through the corridor as he neared the largest cavern. The scrabbling noise from earlier was joined with something leathery. More faint, yet no less foreboding. As was the new standard, there were no human light sources left in the great chamber. Only the luminescent fungal growths scattered along the walls, granting the enormous space no more than a sense of size, and vague shape. Most of the rope bridges which the children had erected had fallen to the floor of the cavern, and Jason crouched at the edge of what was now a rather steep drop. A fungal growth at his knee threw faint light into the darkness, and he peered out over the escarpment. The leathery fluttering was particularly pronounced on the roof of the cave, and was accompanied by a rapid clicking noise which Jason had never heard before anywhere in the wasteland.
A few pebbles clattered down across the fungal patch to his right, accompanied by a small amount of dust. Very slowly, Jason turned his gaze upwards to the source of the disturbance, less than two feet away.
A humanoid creature was perched on the upwards curve of the wall, barely visible in the bleak light. Its wide, sunken eyes were pale, flecked with orange and virulent green. The skin was a rotten brown color, dry and pitted. Almost mummified. The thing bared a set of yellowing teeth and screeched at him. The sound was an unpleasant parping noise, higher in pitch than a mole rat's bark, but containing far more menace.
The thing scrabbled easily along the impossible inclines of the narrow cave, neck twisting at unnatural angles to keep him in view. It moved in a strange twitching motion, as if not fully in control of its own muscles. As it moved, Jason very carefully rose to his feet, shifting backwards as slowly as he dared, keeping his gaze locked on the new creature. As he moved, he shrugged off his silenced rifle, quietly training it on the new threat.
Noting the movement, the thing parped at him again and unfolded, sticking straight out from the wall, almost parallel to the ground. It spreading its arms wide, as if trying to scare him off, revealing the wing-like leathery growths connecting its spindly forearms to its bulbous pelvis.
Jason fire two shots from the hip, the first ripping a wide hole the delicate wing-like growth under creature's shoulder, the second through its skinny chest. Its body crumpled to the ground. Jason grabbed it by the foot and dragged it some distance back down the tunnel, listening carefully in case the leathery noise followed him. The most worrying aspect of the entire encounter was the fact that the thing had managed to move so close to him without alerting him.
A far closer examination of the corpse revealed plenty more strange aspects of the creature's biology. Its eyes, though very wide were sunken far into the skull. In combination with the snout-like nose, dried brown skin, and thin drawn-back lips, it looked almost vampiric in nature. Small horns had emerged in strange formations around the crown of the creature's skull, erupting through puckered volcanic sores in its skin. He had at first assumed it bald, but there were several wispy blond hairs, which dangled down the back of the creature's neck.
Its feet were equally as disturbing. The pad of each foot was almost round and palm-like, and the beast's toes had lengthened and spread, revealing how the thing had been able to climb the cave system's steeply angled walls with such incredible ease and dexterity.
Having spent the necessary time getting to know this latest obstacle, Jason found himself feeling less confident about what awaited him in the vault. How many of these things were there? What exactly had tried to kill him in the flooded chamber? Using the FEV II virus, what other new horrors had the Supermutants added to the world, and where were the children of Little Lamplight?
Dead, more than likely. Or perhaps they had been injected with the virus. Could children survive that? What would happen to them?
He moved forward and once again reached the central chamber. He kneeled at the edge of the tunnel's fifteen-foot high exit, and scanned the chamber. He could hear the flapping of a multitude of those leathery winglets, and as his eyes readjusted to the darkness, he could make out countless shapes flitting back and forth, hanging from the ceiling and barking at one another, communicating in the pitch darkness.
He heard the faintest scrambling noise near the ceiling behind him. he learned quickly, and the extra caution had paid off. He whipped around, lying flat on his back with his rifle pointed up at the ceiling. He had no time to aim, the thing swooped out of the darkness far too fast to allow for that. It knocked his weapon out of the way, but his combat knife was already entering its gut and spilling its innards all over the cave floor. He grabbed it by the throat to hold it at bay as it gnashed at him with pointed teeth. The thing howled in pain as he kept cutting, and the call was answered by a symphony of the gliding devils.
Jason tossed it over the edge of the cliff, into the central cavern. He scrambled to his feet and felt sharp teeth bite into his shoulder. Moving back down the tunnel, he jammed his combat knife into the creature's eye and wrestled its corpse off of him.
The things came crawling from the darkness, swarming towards him down the narrow corridor. They were crawling on the walls and the ceiling, and running along the ground with a strange, ape-like gait. Occasionally they would leap into the air and spread their arms, swooping towards him at high speed. As he ran, through the darkness, he flicked on his Pipboy light. His pursuers recoiled for four seconds, buying him six headshots and a few feet of gained ground.
Realizing that he did not have the firepower necessary to drive his enemies back, Jason dug at his belt for a fragmentation grenade. He usually carried two or three in case of emergencies, and this certainly qualified as one. Working with one hand, he pulled the pins and tossed the two explosives towards the swarm, moving several feet backwards and counting in his head, all the while keeping up a steady fire to slow the swarm's advance.
At three seconds, he dove for the cave floor, spilling out onto the rocky shore of the flooded chamber. Behind him, there was a flash of light and two moist explosions which set the entire cave system ringing. Dismembered limbs and ichor rained out of the narrow corridor, splashing into the still waters of the flooded chamber. They were shortly followed by three dozen of the little devils, driven to a mad frenzy by the sudden noise and light.
The cold waters responded in kind, and began to churn and froth with terrible purpose. A low vocal rumble could be heard, as if the ancient stones themselves had grown an angry voice. The high-pitched parping of the bat-like cretins were suddenly punctuated with cries of pain.
Jason could not make out what was happening on the water's surface, but the number of winged devils flitting about above it were growing slimmer by the moment as bodies either dropped, or were snatched into the abyss by the appendages of the unseen leviathan. The cold waters had turned red with blood. The Wanderer did not stay to see the outcome of the sudden primeval battle. Instead he used it as a distraction, allowing him passage through Little Lamplight's cavern, and into Murder Pass. As he ventured further into the hostile darkness, the same sound he had heard at the entrance returned. The pattering of hundreds of tiny feet. He somehow got the feeling that the horrors dwelling in Little Lamplight were just the beginning.
This is one of a two-parter. expect this story to earn its M rating next chappy.