Scene 14

The tram trundled its way into the vault, entering into a sea of artificial light as the tracks creaked under its weight. As the crew's eyes adjusted the tram came to a sudden and jerksome stop, throwing them all forward slightly. The doors folded back and led to a gridded walkway similar to the one outside but situated within a vast cavernous space, with the steel wheel of the vault door on one side, and two sliding doors on the other side. One of those doors led to a walled off control panel for the vault door, the other was clearly an elevator that led the way down into the vault proper. Both were made of sturdy steel with the Vault Tec logo still emblazoned on them in faded paint.

Lawman was the first to step outside the tram. His feet clapped on the gridded walkway and echoed around the spacious chamber. In the distance, just faintly, he could still hear the storm crashing overhead and the raging waves of the Mississippi but that noise was mostly drowned by the eerie silence that accompanied them all now. Looking back he could see a small pin point of grim grey light at the end of the long tunnel they had passed through. Escape was now far, far away.

As Carter, Katherine and finally Vyatch stepped out of the tram, looking around the vast space before them, Lawman's eyes were drawn to the far wall. It was a perfect sheet of purest white, with very little grime or dust smearing its fine coat of paint. This wasn't what caught Lawman's eye however. The thing that caught his attention was the decaying human skeleton propped up by the elevator door in sharp contrast to the clean wall. It sat next to an ancient 10mm pistol that had been dropped on the walkway. The crumbling skeleton had a gaping hole through its temple. Lawman hadn't a clue who the guy had been (one of the Vault Tec residents he supposed), but whoever it had been, one of his friends had clearly used the poor guy's blood to scribble a message on the perfect white wall above its shattered skull.

Lawman took a few cautious steps closer to the faded scrawl that besmirched the pure white wall, whiter than bone, and narrowed his shrewd eyes as he read the smeared, crimson-turn-black message. It read, 'Don't go down to the basement.'

"How the fuck did they manage to build all this?" Katherine gazed about at the tunnel and the vault that lay before her in awe. "I heard of Vaults but I thought the damn things would be tiny."

"You thought wrong," Lawman replied absent-mindedly, his eyes never leaving the message on the wall. He felt his stomach twist in knots as he read it, a sense of foreboding seeping through to his bones.

"How the hell can they have been smart enough to have constructed this thing and yet have been dumb enough to have blown it all up?"

"Blown what all up?" Vyatch asked.

But Lawman was the one who answered the question. "The world..." he breathed, as he stepped back from the message at last. He struggled to take his eyes off of it. The morbid fascination fixated him. Where the hell was the basement? Why would someone warn him in such a gruesome way not to go down there? He glanced at the elevator, its shaft no doubt penetrating deeper into the vault and its different levels. What was in the basement?

"Vance, can you hear me?" Carter's gravelly voice broke Lawman's chain of thought as he spoke into the walkie-talkie. It crackled a while before Vance's voice came through the static.

"I can hear you alright," he replied, his voice sounding distant and wheezing. "It's getting pretty wild out here."

"You remember what I said, old man," Carter returned. "That guide comes back and you shoot her dead. You copy?"

"I copy ya," Vance's voice crackled in the silence. The sound of static filled the chamber. "Loud and clear."

"Good."

"Carter?"

"What is it?"

"It's gettin' pretty hairy up top. Wind's picking up like nobody's business and river's churning deep. Better hurry on up down there."

"We'll take as long as it takes, old man. You just make sure you stay awake, y'hear?"

And with that Carter turned off the walkie-talkie and tucked it into his belt. He swaggered over to the door that led to the control room. There was a window by its side and Carter peered through it. He saw a control panel not dissimilar to the one on the tram.

Lawman wondered how long Vance would live up there on the surface. It had to be icy cold out there. The dilapidated roof might provide shelter from the freezing rain but not from the howling gale that was whipping the swollen river into a frenzy. At the moment he was kept alive through a mixture of drugs and sheer willpower, but with wounds like the ones he had he couldn't possibly cling on for much longer, especially out in that chilling environment. Lawman felt certain he'd die before this part of the mission was over.

"Lawman," Carter called over. He waved his gun, beckoning Lawman to him. "There's a computer terminal over here. If we're gonna find out where that tech file is we might as well start here."

Lawman stepped over to the doors, pushed the button for it to open and stepped inside. The air was stale. It was immediately apparent that not a soul had set foot in this room for decades – maybe even centuries. Lawman coughed as he made his way over to the computer terminal. He didn't even need to hack into it. It immediately loaded up a screen that said:

'Vault Status Report:-

Life Support Systems: Offline, Ventilation Systems: Offline, Security Countermeasures: Offline, Power to Security Cameras: Minimal, Lighting: Minimal, Calculator: Irreparable.

Quarantine Alert in Vault Sub-Levels – Override at own risk.

Vault Tec Construction and Maintenance Reports:-

[September 14th, 2076 (overwritten)]

[January 10th, 2077 (overwritten)]

[March 7th, 2077 (overwritten)]

[August 30th, 2077 (overwritten)]

[October 23rd, 2077 (overwritten)]…'

Lawman scrolled down further, the green letters on the screen eerily lighting his face, and found these reports ended on December 5th 2112. He clicked on one at random and immediately understood what the 'overwritten' statement meant. The report flickered up on screen and simply read, 'Don't go in the basement. Stay away from the basement. Don't go down to the basement. Stay out of the basement. Keep away from the basement…' over and over again.

"Okay..." he murmured to himself. He went back and clicked on the first report, the one dated September 14th, 2076. It read exactly the same as the first.

'Keep forever out of the basement…'

"Oh, great," Lawman said drily. He turned around and stepped out of the control room. Carter looked at him suspiciously.

"Well? What does it say?"

"Go see for yourself," Lawman replied. He lifted a tremulous hand to his forehead. "I need a fuckin' drink." He strode over to a map of the vault on the far wall.

Carter went inside and looked at the terminal himself. Lawman shut his eyes briefly. This vault was off. Off in the sense that whatever went down in this place he felt positively certain he was better off not knowing about it. He gazed at the map and wasn't surprised to find that there wasn't any illustration of 'the basement'. That wasn't to say that there wasn't a basement. There was. Lawman could see that it was only accessible through the overseer's office which lay at the heart of everything else, but it wasn't illustrated. There was no map of 'the basement'. There was only the overseer's office and an arrow pointing from it labelled, 'to the basement'. And where the basement should have been laid out on the map there was only crisp, white emptiness. There was only blank space. There was nothing.

What did it mean?

Lawman heard Carter whack the terminal a couple of times as though it was broken, the brutish banging echoing around the chamber, but it wasn't broken. It was the Vault that was broken. And whoever the survivors had been, Lawman bet they had been broken too. He looked over to the skeleton. It was dressed in a Vault Tec lab coat and Lawman wondered whether the guy had been murdered or had instead committed suicide. He stepped over to it and on closer inspection found a note curled up in its fist. Lawman picked away the finger bones and lifted the yellowing scrap of paper up for him to see. There were words scribbled erratically on the page in black ink, but it was smudged as though from tears and hard to read. Lawman read the message out loud in the haunting quiet.

"I'm sorry," he read, Vyatch and Katherine looking over to him in stony silence. "We had no choice. We had to quarantine them. You have to know that […] couldn't let them escape. Left so much behind. Destroyed…Calcu…the overseer was… They infec… the brain matter […] It was all a lie. This vault was never a safe haven. It wasn't even a tomb. It was a petri dish of nightmares. God save us all…"

Lawman let the chilling page drop from his fingers. It fell to the ground like an autumn leaf. A petri dish of nightmares, Lawman thought to himself, just what exactly had he let himself in for? Vyatch and Katherine weren't unfazed, but they masked it well.

Carter stalked out of the computer room, pointing back to the terminal. "What sort of ten grades of crazy do you have to be to write all that?" he exclaimed. "Fuck me! We'll just have to try to find out more inside the vault."

"You still want to go in there?" Lawman asked.

Carter laughed. "It's what we came here for isn't it? And guess who's heading out in front," Carter sneered as he pointed the Colt 45 at Lawman's chest. "And don't even think about going for that 10mm on the floor. I'll shoot you dead before you touch the handle."

The thought had never crossed Lawman's mind. The gun was ancient, most likely in dire need of repair and likely to backfire. "Relax, Carter. I ain't going nowhere."

"You sure ain't." He motioned for Lawman to get moving and Lawman reluctantly pressed the 'open' button on the elevator.

There was a short tinging sound as the doors slid open. The light inside the elevator was late in flickering on, leaving Lawman facing pitch black through the open doors for a second. For a moment Lawman thought the elevator had broken down, that there was only a bottomless pit stretching all the way down. If there were a bottomless pit there Carter would probably still force him down it. As it was they all stepped inside and allowed the doors to smoothly close shut behind them. Lawman felt a moment of inertia as they slowly began to descend, leaving behind the tunnel that led them here, leaving behind the storm and the wilds, that small pin-prick of grim grey light that was the outside world. The only tether they had to the outside world from this moment on was Carter's walkie-talkie, which was clipped tightly onto his belt.

"Vance, can you still hear me?" Carter spoke into it.

The crackling grew louder, but Vance's voice could still be made out through the static. "Aye I'm still here."

The elevator clunked to a stop and the doors slid open to reveal inky darkness outside the small cone of light that the company stood under in the elevator. It was darkness so impenetrable as to make one believe one had turned blind. If the elevator light turned off right then and there Lawman wouldn't have been able to see his hand in front of his face.

Lawman's palms grew sweaty. There could have been anything lurking beyond the elevator doors.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Carter nudged Lawman with the tip of his gun. Lawman stepped warily outside and used his pip-boy light as best as he could to see ahead of him. It lit up like a pale green beacon and Lawman was instantly reminded of St. Louis, the rows and rows of dark aisles, and the ten year old boy he'd got his pip-boy from. There was a desk, cluttered, with a terminal to the right. Lawman was just able to read the sign saying, 'reception' that was bathed in the unnatural green light of his pip-boy. To the immediate left was a sign pointing down a seemingly never-ending corridor labelled, 'Orientation'.

Lawman took another step and almost jumped when the nearest overhead light flickered on, suddenly spilling its artificial light over the scene. Lawman remembered what the Vault Status Report had said; 'Lighting: minimal'. Apparently, the lights would come on as he approached them...

The others stepped out of the elevator, following after him, and were startled to find the cone of light, the safely lit haven behind the elevator doors, vanish suddenly, leaving the darkness to stalk behind them.

…And, apparently the lights would turn off again as they left them.

All of which meant, of course, that none of them could see more than five feet in front of them or behind them at any given time.

Lawman, thinking on his feet, swung an office chair out from behind the reception desk and kicked it, sending it wheeling down the corridor. The next light flickered on and the blackness ahead shrunk back.

"Alright," Lawman said, dusting his hands. "They're triggered by motion sensors. This is workable."

He didn't wait to be prompted by the others. He walked around behind the desk (a lamp by his side flickered on) and he began to pore through the reports on the terminal. It came up with some statistics about the Sunshine Vault, such as the number of occupants being fifty-seven, which was quite a small number considering the size of the place. Lawman scrolled down and there was a list of names of all the Vault's residents starting with the overseer, chief science staff, and security goons. They numbered sixteen in total; one overseer (called Turnbull), five science staff and ten security guards. Then there were the names of the remaining civilian residents. Lawman did a quick scan of some of their profiles.

Amongst the most interesting was a Bertrand T. Beacznik; a quick read of his profile revealed that he was in fact 'Berty Beat' who ran the Sunshine Disco Parlour that Barry the protectron had mentioned. Apparently he was a raging alcoholic and was involved in cocaine trafficking back in his old life, the details of which Lawman was startled to find listed intricately and explicitly in his profile. Apparently, Berty Beat had had ties to something called 'the Cartels'. From what Lawman could make of them they sounded a bit like the post-war tribes who produced and traded drugs. Lawman, being the former sheriff that he was, raised his eyebrows; Berty Beat was a very naughty boy. Lawman wondered how he got through the Vault Tec vetting process, only to immediately answer his own question. It was obvious: Money.

Then there was Mrs. Martha Braun. Lawman was taken aback when he saw her profile picture. She was a very buxom lady with a delicate, smiling face, and piercing grey eyes. Reading her profile though, she didn't seem to be special in any other way. She had been an Administrative Assistant at the Vault Tec Construction Subsidiary, which Lawman guessed was why she was permitted entrance to the vault at Sunshine. She was wife to Mr. David J. Braun and the mother of two children, William and Mary (five and twelve years old respectively), who all made it into the vault with her. Her husband was apparently one of the construction workers for Vault Tec so Lawman guessed they'd both met at work.

Arthur Applecroft was, on the other hand, quite fascinating. His profile was the most detailed and appeared to have been written on the fly as a stream of consciousness – and the consciousness of a very bitter individual at that. This guy was never supposed to have been permitted entrance to the vault. Apparently he had managed to bluff his way onto the last tram journey and the guards had only realized their mistake when it was too late and the doors had been sealed shut. Arthur had been an investigative journalist who had proved to be a thorn in Vault Tec's side for some time. He'd repeatedly interviewed employees of the Vault Tec Company and, according to the profile, been a nuisance to the Safehouse Project. No details were given as to how the man had become a nuisance. He did, however, have a reputation for ignoring Press Censorship and Gagging laws and irreverence for authority. The profile ended with the recommendation that Vault Tec employees and vault residents should have limited contact with the man.

The lamp by Lawman's side flickered slightly as Vyatch came around and peered over his shoulder.

The last person Lawman scrolled through was Zelda P. Winfred. Her profile was interesting simply because there was so little in it. She was the wife of Herbert Winfred and was one of the chief scientists in the vault. Her husband hadn't made it to the tram in time, leaving her knowing no one in the vault other than her work colleagues. She was described as being stolid and diligent, a regular workaholic, and she mostly shied from company. Apparently she was under suspicion and lengths were taken to keep her under watch. Nothing else was said.

"Well," Carter grunted impatiently. "Is there anything there? Any information about the vault?"

"Only a load of junk about the different residents," Vyatch answered before Lawman could tear his eyes away from the screen. Vyatch tapped the name 'Bertrand T. Beacznik' on the screen. "I like this guy," he rumbled.

"What the hell are we hangin' around here for, then?" Carter retorted. "We need to find information about the tech file, not learn about some long dead fucks."

"We might learn more about what happened to this place if we-."

"I don't give a fuck, Lawman. We need to find the tech file. We need to find Lost Orleans. I don't give a damn about whatever messed up shit went down in this place, and as far as I'm concerned as long as we stay clear of that fuckin' basement, whatever the hell it is, we don't have to know…"

Suddenly there was a disturbing sound that trickled from the far end of the corridor.

They all looked ahead into the darkness. It took a while to notice but it steadily grew louder; louder and closer. It was the sound of something scuttling in the darkness, as though along the walls or ceiling, and it was headed straight for them.

Vyatch drew out his gun and the Cazadors turned their startled eyes to scanning the inky blackness that filled the corridor up ahead. Carter pointed the Colt 45, cruel eyes trained directly ahead, ready to blast whatever was coming for them to kingdom come, just as soon as it entered the light above the swiveling office chair. Lawman's skin drew pale. It was no normal sound. The scuttling scurried closer until it reached them, but when it did nothing poured out of the darkness. It was so loud it felt it was all around them, the scratching sound surrounding them, filling their ears. Yet nothing was there. The Cazadors' guns frantically followed the sound, swerving to point the other way as it passed. Then it faded away behind them, leaving the crew perplexed, scared and with an itchy feeling all down their arms, as though they had been swarmed by invisible spiders.

The scuttling subsided into the chilling silence Lawman could never grow accustomed to.

"The fuck was that?" Vyatch growled.

"Radroaches in the vents. It must have been," Katherine answered, not altogether convinced of her own response.

"Pfft." Carter holstered the revolver and rolled his eyes. "Nothing to be scared of then. Just some overgrown bugs."

Lawman hoped Katherine was right as they all made their way down the corridor to the Orientation room. There was always an impenetrable veil of darkness that lingered in front as light after light flickered on. More disturbingly though, the soft cones of light they'd stepped out from died, snuffed out one by one, so that a solid wall of darkness closed in on them, stalking them along the corridor, leaving the way back lost in a swirl of inky blackness. The sound of their own footsteps echoed down the hall, bouncing back and making it sound like the darkness that followed them had footsteps of its own. It became hard to tell which sounds were your footsteps and which were the echo as they hung in the silence.

Lawman was grateful when he finally reached the orientation room and found himself facing a room similar to one of those old world cinemas. It felt cozier than the corridors. As each of them stepped into the room, a silver screen startled them as it suddenly lit up the wall in front of them, the projector whirring to life above their heads. It wasn't long before Lawman's uneasiness was dialed up to eleven, as, up on the silver screen, he found himself gazing up at Mr Kees. No, wait. It wasn't Mr Kees. Kees wasn't this tall. For a moment it looked like him – minus the walking stick. But the white suit and the glasses seemed the same for a fraction of a second.

It was Giles Wolstencroft.