Scene 13

"TRESPASSING ON VAULT TEC PROPERTY!"

The company froze on the spot. Their faces caught in the red glare of the protectron's screen. Barry repeated its dire warning, only for each of them to stand stock still. Vance shifted backwards bumping into Vyatch. He was the most exposed to the protectron's lasers, being the one who was lingering in front of everyone else. Lawman saw his hands shaking.

Carter kept his fist closed around the tram handle, as though it were stuck there, as though Carter's greed for the tech file kept it in place. His dark eyes shifted from the tram to the protectron.

"Carter," Lawman breathed, a sharp whisper that cut beneath the blaring message of the protectron, "remove your hand…Slowly. Just, very calmly, take your hand from the handle, Carter."

But Carter's cold eyes were fixed on the tram doors. There was a moment when his fingers clutched the handle tighter. "No." His harsh voice could cut through ice, though it was barely a whisper too.

Lawman stared at the man stood before him, almost disbelieving what he was hearing.

The protectron's warning got louder. "FATAL ACTION: IMMINENT!" It screamed in its horrifically mechanical voice. "STEP AWAY FROM VAULT TEC PROPERTY!"

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Carter?" Lawman hissed. "You're gonna get us all killed!"

Lawman saw Carter's hand holster his weapon and drift down to his satchel. Lawman looked down and saw the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun glinting in its depths.

"YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY!"

"Are you crazy?" Lawman was almost apoplectic. The thing had leveled its fucking lasers at them and here was Carter thinking he could out gun it, that he could draw faster than a machine that only needed to send a tiny electric pulse through its wiring and blast them all to kingdom come with its goddamn turrets. "Carter," Lawman beseeched urgently, "walk away. We can come back later. We can work around the thing. Carter!"

"No," Carter hissed, his breath fogging up the window in front of him, his dark eyes locked on the tram door. "I didn't come all this way to be stopped by a fuckin' tin can with legs…"

"VAULT TEC IS OFF LIMITS!" Barry screeched, its motion sensor light flickering madly. "COMPLY OR FACE SUMMARY EXECUTION!"

"Carter, this is an armored laser turret with legs and an unstable computer program that's just as erratic as it is blown to fritz! We can come back later!"

"With this storm? There might not be a later," Carter hissed back. His hand drifted further down.

"FIVE!" the demented Barry counted down. Carter's hand fished deeper in his satchel.

"Carter, you're good but you're not that good…"

"FOUR!" The protectron blared, its motion sensor light flickering wildly. Lawman could hear the hum of its lasers as they began to charge.

"Lawman, you better shut your face or else you're gonna be next," Carter replied.

"THR-."

Carter spun around. His hand was a blur as it swung out of his satchel carrying with it the sawn off shotgun. It gleamed madly in the red glare of Barry's screen. Barry's motion sensor light pulsed one last time, and then flared brighter than before; one perturbing and protracted needle of light that pierced Lawman's eyes. No one else reacted. No one else had time to react.

There was a boom, as if the sound fell from the sky like thunder, and the shotgun blasted its round. Choking smoke spewed forth from the barrel as it shot its load into the protectron's side. It staggered. The sound of rending steel and screeching metal filled the air, as though Barry was itself screaming its fearsome mechanized scream. For a split second its armor was ripped to ribbons.

It returned fire. There was a sound like the crack of a whip as its lasers erupted, flashing like strobe lights and instantly filling the air with red fire. One beam of light luckily struck above them like forked lightning, scorching the wind and vaporizing rain. The second beam was less lucky for the company. It found its mark. Lawman saw the beam strike and thought it looked like a flash in a frying pan. It smelled like a flash in a frying pan. The odor of burnt flesh chokingly filled the air as Vance's leg erupted into flames. His piercing screams scarcely left his lips when Lawman finally dived for the ground and took cover.

Then there was just chaos. Round after round blasted overhead from the Cazadors, as they whirled into action. Lawman scrambled on the floor over to Vance, the spray from the raging waves beneath hungrily lashing out at him through the gridded walkway. They gleamed in the red glare of Barry's screen like tongues of fire. Lawman speedily took off his coat amidst the crashing waves and crashing fire of the guns and made his way to Vance.

Vance was sprawled on the floor tossing and turning wildly as the fire crept up his body like a lover's searing caress. His screams and shrieks were piercing as he desperately tried to put out the fire, his arms flailing wildly as the hungry flames busily ate away at his legs. The guns boomed overhead as Lawman crawled forwards.

The fire reached Vance's genitals.

Lawman reached him and desperately threw his coat over him. It was sodden and heavy, and for a moment it refused to spread out, especially as Vance rolled wildly.

"Jesus fuck!" Lawman cursed. He unfurled the coat and flung it over once again. He enveloped the fire with it and the flames subsided to a dying sizzle; a sick curdling sound so similar to frying bacon.

Vance's blood curdling screams continued.

Smoke and steam rose in a shimmering screen from the coat, and it merged and blended with the gun smoke so that the entire walkway felt like a sauna from hell. There was smoke behind Lawman, smoke either side of him, above him, and in front of him was the shimmering shroud of steam and the sickening scent of roasted flesh. Suddenly, Kees' words flashed through his head, haunting him, echoing from the time they'd investigated the distant fire. 'What? You don't think I know what burnt flesh smells like?' Those words cycled through his brain like a record stuck on repeat, '… don't think I know what burnt flesh smells like?' It was almost as though, as Lawman found himself drowned by the sound of gunfire, Kees was coming back to sneer at him. '…don't think I know what burnt flesh…'

Lawman looked up.

And through the shimmering haze he caught Barry glaring directly at him, catching him in that red glow. Its motion sensor light, that thin needle of piercing white that slipped through your eyes, focused directly on him. Its lasers pointed at his face. Their humming grew louder, building to a deadly crescendo. Lawman froze.

Then there was one last deafening explosion as Vyatch's gun fired its armor piercing round straight into Barry's 'head'. The protectron rocked back slightly, and then powered down. The red glow that bathed Lawman died like the setting sun, its thin needle of piercing white light vanished, its arms drooped, and its cowboy hat came loose and flopped to the floor.

Suddenly, the relic of the old world returned to where it truly belonged.

The guns ceased but Vance was still yelping in pain, crumpled on the walkway, with Lawman's coat trailed over his legs like a funeral shroud that had been pulled back.

"Sweet mother of – fuck! – Jesus, someone… Someone give me a stimpack!" Lawman shouted over the yelping of the man in front of him. Lawman didn't know what to do. What could he do? All he could do was listen to Vance as the grown man pitifully cried out for his mother, wailing at the top of his lungs.

The Cazadors simply hung back and watched impassively as the man wailed in pain. "Get up, Lawman," Carter spoke in his cold stony voice. He put away his smoking sawn off shotgun and retrieved Lawman's Colt 45 from its holster. He once again pointed it directly at Lawman's back. "We've got a vault to open."

Lawman looked around. Katherine, Vyatch and Carter simply looked back with cold, dead eyes. "Your vault?" he gazed at each one of them, stunned by their indifference. Anger flared in him as suddenly as a match being struck. "Fuck your goddamn vault, you jackals! Vance is dying here and all you can think about is the damn tech file? Stuff Oswald's fuckin' text file!"

He stood up, fists clenched and trembling like a leaf.

"Easy there, Lawman," Katherine said. She cocked her gun. "We need you to open up the vault, so you do that and we'll take care of Vance."

Vyatch strode over to Vance, brushing past Lawman, and for a moment he looked like he might aim his gun directly at Vance's head and splatter his brains into the raging river beneath them. Instead he fished in his pockets and withdrew some Med-X. He stuck the needle in Vance's neck and injected the purple liquid into his bloodstream. It didn't take long for Vance's screams to die down into a soft murmur.

"There you go, Lawman," Katherine said at last. "Vance will soon be flying high as a kite. High enough that the pain will never reach him. You, however, hon', might not be so lucky."

"Get moving, Lawman," Carter grunted.

Lawman turned back around to look at Vance before stepping up to the tram. Lawman saw him almost lull into sleep before Vyatch slapped him around the face, stirring him from wakeless slumber. "Not yet, old man," Vyatch rumbled. "You're not going anywhere yet."

Carter stepped over, sat on his hunches before Vance and looked him straight in the eye. "Look here, partner." He spat as though he'd been chewing tobacco. "It's your choice. You can either die, a wasted loner out here in this devil's sweat sack of a town, or you can stay alive for a little longer and be of use to us. Which is it gonna be?"

Vance's eyes burned.

"You gonna be useful?" Carter repeated.

"Aye. And damn that robot. Damn it to hell!" Vance retorted. "I always knew I'd die out here. But I'll be damned if I go out mewling like a Brahmin!"

"Good," Carter gave Vance more Med-X, before propping his body against the railing and handing him a walkie-talkie. "You're lookout," Carter said. "If anything comes our way. If anything approaches the vault whilst we're in there, you let us know."

Vance nodded, eyes burning brightly through the sea of numbing pain.

Katherine's eyes scanned the company, before she spun around and looked wildly about her. "What the fuck?" she shouted.

"What?" Carter looked to her.

"The guide – that bitch!"

Carter looked around and Lawman saw his brow darken as he realized it too. The guide was no longer there. Somewhere between the shots fired and Vance becoming incapacitated she had slipped away, and now as each of them looked through the storm, the torrents of rain falling outside sending rainwater cascading from the town buildings, they could see no sign of the southerner. She was gone, somewhere out in the ghost town, or the willows beyond it, and making good her escape. Or else she was lurking somewhere in the town, waiting to ambush them, and Lawman didn't put that past her either.

Either way they were unlikely to find her now. She'd seized her opportunity and gone for it. Lawman, left behind with the Cazadors and an ever shrinking crew, felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was the only one left – the only one still trapped with Carter and his team. He began to feel he should have run too, but he was foreign to this land. The guide was not. He wondered how far she'd get, whether she would survive out there. Somehow, after all she'd been put through, he felt they hadn't seen the last of her.

"FUCK!" Carter almost screamed as he bolted to the railing and aimed his gun out to the stormy streets, searching for a silhouette, a shadow, anything human looking that he could shoot and destroy. Eventually, after finding nothing down the ghostly roads, and hearing nothing but the pitter patter of rain, he pulled back his gun. He punched the railing, pommeling it with his fists until it fell loose and clattered into the swirling river below. "Curse her fuckin' eyes!"

"What should we do, Carter?" Vyatch asked from the corner. "Should we go after her?"

Carter spun around and almost looked like he might shoot them all right there, before his temper cooled and his cruel eyes turned to Vyatch.

"No," he said at last. "The storm will kill the whore. We don't need her. We've got the vault in our sights and we've been held up for long enough." His eyes locked on Lawman. "We've got everything we need."

With that Carter strode over to Vance. He gave him a kick and Vance winced in pain. "You better make sure you do your job, old man," Carter hissed vehemently. He handed Vance a luger. "If she comes back here put one between her eyes."

"Aye," Vance croaked.

Lawman, however, felt sure she wouldn't return just yet. He turned from Vance and picked up his slightly charred coat from the ground and dusted it off. It was still serviceable, he guessed, and he put it on once again. Its tattered ends were now more tattered (and blackened to boot) as they draped about the back of his knees and trailed in the wind.

Carter then stormed to the tram, seized its handle and finally tugged the sliding door open. The four of them stepped inside, with Lawman in front of course. Lawman didn't need prompting. He didn't want a gun being prodded in his back again and so he busied himself with the controls, plugging in his pip-boy and accessing the computer panel. All the while Lawman noticed Vyatch studying the controls and watching Lawman like a hawk, reading his movements. It took Lawman a while to realize that Vyatch was learning how to use the pip-boy. A shiver ran down Lawman's spine.

They wouldn't need him for long.

Soon the tram's lights flickered on and the whole thing, from the outside, looked like a lamp-lit coach lost in a swirl of dark rain and shadowy streets, about to make its way into the underworld.

Lawman guessed it really was an underworld of a sort they were going to break their way into, and God only knew what waited for them there. The vaults were enclosed, isolated pockets of the old world buried deep underground like pharoahs' tombs. They were like an old bedroom of someone who'd died, a perfectly preserved shrine, and their family had never moved on. Humanity hadn't moved on from the pre-war age but the world had, and all it had left were shells of corporate buildings whose dark secrets spilled forth like whispers from their husks, sinister propaganda posters and music that still haunted the ruins of cities, and quirky robots with nice manners and the predisposition to fry your brain.

But in the vaults it felt like you were actually setting foot once more in that time. It felt like trespassing on holy ground. The age of Fancy Lad Snacks and exclamations of 'Gee Willikers!' and summer Football games on the lawn were long dead, haunting the faded posters and crackly music that survived the bombs, but the vaults - they felt alive. Something still beat in the heart of those vast underground complexes and it had always disturbed Lawman, more than anything else he'd seen of this cursed world.

The tram started to move.

It creaked as it slowly ground along the rusted tracks and the tunnel in front of them grew larger, swallowing them all whole as they plunged into its depths. The milky white lights that dimly gleamed in the darkness led their way further and further down, as behind them the storm, the crashing waves and Vance grew smaller and fainter and more distant.

They trundled into silence, the only claustrophobic sound being that of the rickety tram – a steel coffin leading them to the unknown.

Lawman's hands grew clammy as the tram kept on its course. There was nothing to say that something wouldn't stop it – a cave in that they might crash into. But the journey proved to be smooth as the tram eventually drew to a gentle stop.

Vyatch remained by Lawman's side, watching closely.

Before them the tracks led to the vault doors, tightly sealed by a great metal wheel that covered the entrance like a boulder to a sarcophagus. Something flashed on the tram's computer screen.

"Uh-oh," Lawman groaned. He wiped the dust off the flickering monitor.

"What's happened? Why aren't we moving?" Carter snapped from behind Lawman's shoulder.

"It's asking me if we want to continue," Lawman replied cautiously. "It says 'Bio-Hazard'."

"What do you mean, 'Bio-Hazard'?"

"I don't know. That's just what it says…"

"Keep moving."

"Shouldn't we think about this?"

"That guy entered this vault, right. The one Oswald talked about. The one who'd discovered a tech file existed. So clearly he wasn't deterred." Carter reached over and jabbed a finger towards the Vault door. "Open it."

And that was it. Lawman hesitantly reached over to the control panel and pressed 'release'. There was an alarm sounding as an amber siren-light flashed overhead, intermittently lighting the tunnel and sending it back into darkness again. The great steel wheel that was the vault door slowly clunked and then began to slide back revealing a fine sliver of blinding white light. As it rolled backwards the crescent of light grew until it engulfed and swallowed the entire tram. It blinded them, like an intense full moon.

As each of the crew shielded their eyes the tram once again pulled forward.

"WELCOME TO VAULT TEC," a mechanized but distinctly female voice resounded above them. It sounded eerily insincere and mocking.

"ENJOY YOUR STAY."