The birds circled like flies over spoiled meat. Evelyn stared at the tiny black cloud swarming the tower and heard their distant caws celebrating the most splendid of rotten occasions.
"What happened?" she questioned as Charon stepped up beside her. "Do you think something's wrong?"
He glanced down to the satchel on his waist, adjusting the security of its strap. His eyes then sidled over to stare at her, but she didn't notice. The ghoul eventually said nothing, turning to the northwest and continuing along their way. She swiveled her head around and noticed the distance he had put between them, a little bounce in her step as she quickly hastened to catch up. The smooth motion of her palm sliding into his was relaxed and natural, and she stumbled a little after stepping over a patch of unnaturally fine sand.
"So, anyways…uh…what were we talking about?" she asked (with a sort of sweet innocence).
Charon swiveled his head to something far out in the distance- a couple of radscorpions quarreling over territory.
"The snack dispenser," he grumbled.
"Oh! Right!"
The story quickly picked up and fluttered page after page after page after page after-
"Just hold that thought," she suddenly announced as she let go of his hand. She began to hop and skip backward to a thick, tangled bushel of dried brush. "I need to pee!"
When she was out of earshot, Charon heavily sighed and stretched his spine in place, grumbling under his breath as he scanned for hostiles, "…there is no rush."
She was no sooner standing straight and zipping up her suit than he was preparing to sit down on the backend of a rusted car frame, her words already drifting to his tired ears.
"And then there was the whole 'Missing Projector' incident…" She slowly trailed off, catching his eyes as she looked at him. "Am I talking too much?"
He raised a brow muscle, but said nothing. If he were to be honest with her, he didn't think he'd ever heard anyone talk more in their entire fucking life.
She faltered with a lick of her lips and lightly hugged herself. "Amata sometimes told me I talked too much and that it was pretty annoying, and, well, I just want to be sure I'm not boring you to tears, or anything. I can stop."
Charon clenched his jaw—too subtle for her to notice—and looked out into the distance. Great. "You do not talk much," he said.
"Are you sure?"
He deadpanned, "Yes."
"…well, tell me when you've had enough, I guess."
Evelyn then dove deep into the lore of her life underground, ignorant to the continual twitch of his eye or the gnashing of his teeth whenever she spun around to look at something. When the sun was high noon in the sky, she paused to retrieve three bottles of purified water: one for her, one for him, and one poured into a shallow dish for the panting dog. Dogmeat lapped at the bowl, developing a frothy muzzle in the process. Evelyn drained hers in one go, her cheeks bursting like an overfilled dam.
Charon lowered the rim from his lips. There was a new name punched in his card alongside her father's. He asked, "Who is Amata?"
She blinked, surprised at the interest. "She's, um, well, she wasmy best friend. I don't know if she is anymore, since I got kicked out and all…"
"She is your friend?" he asked, the doubt creeping in.
Another blink with a cock of her head. He must have offended her. "Best, but, yeah."
Charon crushed his emptied bottle in one hand before tossing it over his shoulder. "She did not come with you."
Evelyn had a warm rush of tears prick her eyes, and she turned away from him before he could witness her crying. She said thickly, "Why would she? The wasteland fucking sucks…I don't blame her. She's safe down there."
Charon's heavy footsteps drew close, and she sniffled and rubbed at her wettened cheeks before he drew her around by the chin. He looked down at her, the fire of his eyes hot enough to temper steel.
"I would have come with you."
Evelyn wiggled her toes, as though ensuring they were still on solid ground.
"I know you would, big guy." She then smiled bright enough to cast a shadow on the sun. "Umm, where was I, again…?"
The flames extinguished as pitifully as a burning candlewick being smothered as he rasped, completely monotone, "The time Butch failed his algebra exam."
"Oh yeah! Anyways, Mr. Brotch found out he didn't just fail, but he had cheated off stupid-ass Freddie Gomez, who had then cheated off of…"
Charon's entire left side of his face began to erratically twitch.
She is the employer. I am the employee. She is the employer. I am the employee.
The ghoul had experienced worse than this- he had survived Ahzrukhal's self-inflating soliloquies, drunken garbled stories from patrons drowning in their glasses. He had survived literal torture at the hands of raiders after an ambush with a past employer…but this…
"And then I told him-!"
…this was somehow far worse.
"-and Dad got mad at me since I broke his nose-"
He would endure. It made her happy. He was resilient.
"-but then I just snuck out of my room like I always did when he grounded me-"
He was going to lose his fucking mind.
A band of feral dogs besieged them from over a ridgeline- her fucking mouth just kept running as he blasted them into stew-sized chunks. He helped her climb over steep terrain; she thanked him with another distant memory that wasn't distant enough to be forgotten about altogether. She blabbered and jibber-jabbered and sat on her ass to keep that fucking mouth moving while he turned a couple of bumfuck-nowhere-wandering fiends into fodder, and he finally faced his building frustration by the head and whipped out his dick for her lips to take a ride on. He hadn't realized how grateful he was for silence…until he came, and she rebooted back to where she had exactly left off after wiping her mouth and zipping him back away with a little pat of her hand.
She is the employer. I am the employee. She is the employer. I am the employee. She is the-
And then, the most wonderful sound pierced their ears.
"Help!" The sound of someone in distress. "Somebody help me!"
Perhaps there was a God.
Charon immediately halted his steps, banding an arm out before Evelyn could take another.
"Wait here," he instructed, and then he climbed the hill alone to carefully scope the situation below.
A smoothskin woman and a man, both fighting for their lives with a giant radscorpion. The man seemed to fare decent enough, in that he was still standing with the tire iron he wielded. The woman, however, was deemed useless, wildly waving her arms around and screaming, and would more than likely succumb to a painful demise.
Evelyn ignored his warning and skidded through the dirt after coming in hot. She looked on with that ever-growing panic on her face that foretold her wishes for them to intervene, and he sighed as he slid down the ravine before she could attempt to assist them herself.
"Over here!" he rasped loudly enough to be heard, and the giant mutated creature skittered in his direction, aligning itself perfectly down the sight of his barrel.
It took two shots straight down the gullet, sprinkling enough blue shell and bits of meat around to fertilize a large enough garden bed to keep all of Megaton fed. He kept a steady hand on the trigger of his gun, giving the smoothskin pair a watchful eye as he heard Evelyn come rolling in behind him. She stumbled and bumped into his back, rubbing at her nose with a mumbled owbefore stepping around him to wave a friendly greeting.
"Are you two okay?" She sneezed.
They looked at each other. The man lowered his weapon.
"Guess we are," he relented. "And who might you be?"
"Evelyn, Charon, Dogmeat." She pointed to each of them respectively, and then smiled as the couple offered them a hot meal in thanks for saving their lives.
Charon grumbled under his breath as he followed in step behind. They were led to a small shack and forced to listen to the couple ranting about the Enclave and President Eden.
Charon had been deceived.
God was dead.
If he thought Evelyn's anecdotes were annoying, this paranoia couple took the whole fucking cake and shoved it so far up his ass he could taste it in his mouth. Evelyn seemed to have enough of it herself, for she repeatedly pointed to her Pip-Boy and motioned for the door.
"Thanks so much for the, uh, soup, but we really have to be on our way."
Thank fucking Christ.
"Jesus," Evelyn mumbled to him as she waved them a farewell at the top of the next hill, "I thought they would never fucking shut up."
His neck cracked as it slowly swiveled to stare at her.
They were soon met with another 'friendly' smoothskin, not even a mere ten minutes after the last.
"Hey now, just what is a beautiful young lady such as yourself doing around here, huh?" he drawled after each side had lowered their guns. "Look, gorgeous, you can call me Ronald, and if you need-"
Before Evelyn was given an opportunity to make heads or tails of this dirtbag's intentions, Charon had lunged for the collar of his jacket and spun him upside down, dangling him cleanly off the ground by one foot.
(He would kill him)
The slimeball squawked, "Hey, hey, what the hell?!"
Evelyn placed a hand on his arm, but Charon growled and shook the man vigorously enough to rattle his teeth in his skull.
"Charon!" she gasped. "Put him down!"
He gave her a look before relenting and dropping him face-first in the dirt. The smoothskin coughed after inhaling some in his lungs, spitting to the side and groaning. Charon placed a boot over his chest, slowly applying pressure until the smoothskin began to turn bright red with buggy eyes that threatened to pop out.
"What in the world is the matter with you?!" Evelyn attempted to pull him off, but he held his ground…and the smoothskin's, too.
"I do not like what he said to you," Charon growled.
"Huh?!"
Charon glared evilly at the man struggling to maintain consciousness. "He does not call you that."
"…sorry…" the prick spluttered on a whisper of a breath.
"Oh my God, you're so dramatic!" Evelyn rolled her eyes and tugged at his arm again. "Let him go!"
Charon lifted his solid weight, and the smoothskin gave a mighty inhale.
Evelyn got down to one knee and held the map of her Pip-Boy over his face. "Sorry about that…do you by chance know how much farther Vault 112 is?" She pointed at the marker with her finger.
The smoothskin only stared at her with an unblinking gaze.
Charon said dryly, "He is unconscious."
She sighed and stood upright, looking down at the pathetic sack of meat Charon could easily dice up into tiny pieces and toss as birdseed for the local wildlife.
"…we probably shouldn't leave him out here like this. Can you help me move him?"
Charon picked him up with one hand and tossed him in the nearest bush (with the thorniest brambles). Good enough. Evelyn was staring at him when he turned around, her face pinched and disapproving of his mannerisms.
He rolled his eyes. They continued.
She paused at the top of a rocky outcropping, overlooking the wastes below and the only notable structure for miles around. She held up her arm, showing him the location of Vault 112.
"That building is right where the Vault is supposed to be…do you think there's some mistake?"
Her voice was so desperate and worried he couldn't help but study the marker in relation to the Red Rocket Gas Station out in the distance. Her father had said on his holotape that it was located inside a garage…
But he did not have to volunteer that information.
"Shall we continue?" he asked anyway, hopeful she would see it to be pointless and lead them back to Megaton. To her house, to a bath, and to the bed-
She clicked the screen off and nodded. "Yeah, let's just be sure."
Dogmeat loped ahead, scouting the area and perimeter inside before them, and Evelyn gasped in shock at the bloodied state they came to discover him in upon entering. The fresh corpses of radroaches and molerats eased her worried mind, and Charon conducted his own sweep of the garage before allowing her entrance.
It was empty. God truly existed.
Evelyn slowly walked around the place, her fingertip lightly dusting a countertop. "…I don't understand," was all she said, and her voice was so fucking sad he placed a hand on her shoulder.
"It is not your fault," was what he told her.
She moved away. His hand came down to his side. The straps of her pack slid off, her voice more tired than he had ever heard it before.
"I want to stay here for the night. It's safe, and we can dig around to see if there's anything useful to take back home."
He nodded, setting right to work. She rummaged through a first aid kit on the wall while he managed to pry open a gun cabinet and pluck some boxes of ammo that had been left to lie, and he heard her muttering to herself as she tripped over a rusted aluminum can.
"It's so fucking dark in here," she said sourly, and he turned his head in time to see her flipping an electrical switch on the wall.
The floor just to her side made her bolt like a frightened horse as it opened, revealing a passageway down into the depths of the earth.
"Dad…" she breathed, and then the light of her Pip-Boy was flicked on as she descended below.
More molerats, more living chew toys for the wolf-hound that ripped them to shreds. Evelyn didn't look back, not even once, as she pushed on ahead, leaving him a few steps behind while the light of her Pip-Boy guided them underground.
"Be cautious," Charon reminded her, but she didn't seem to hear him as she blindly turned corners and opened service doors until they both turned to a narrow tunnel with a single door at its end.
Vault 112
"It was really here…" she whispered, striding forward with the pin from her Pop-Boy already extended in hand. "Granted, it's different from myVault, but, I don't believe it, there it is!"
She went to insert the node into a panel, startled from her thoughts when Charon held her back by the wrist.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" he rasped firmly.
She gave him a strange look, and her voice grew soft. He was suddenly in her world, once more.
"It is," she said.
He let her go, and she opened the door with the press of a button.
An alarm blared; a light began to rotate. The giant Vault door shuddered as something from the other side settled in its thick core, and then a horrible squealing sound that made her tightly cover her ears echoed down the hallway. The entire tunnel gave a light shake with the ground rumbling beneath their feet, and she coughed as a cloud of dust was disturbed and wafted in their faces.
Charon stepped ahead. "I will take lead."
He did not remember the last time he had entered a Vault…it must have been long enough ago. Their boots clanged down the hallway, the bright fluorescents harsh on his eyes and the hum of the pipes unsettling to his ears. The door on the opposite end opened before they had even reached it, a lone Robobrain on the other side. Evelyn had kept his shells at bay with a raise of her hand as she listened intently to what the thing had to say, and then it handed them each a vault suit to wear.
"Excuse me, do you know my Dad?" she asked the thing as it began to roll away. "Hey! James, my father, is he-?"
It wheeled around to her, its mechanical limbs awkwardly waving around. "Please redress in your Vault-Tec issued suit and proceed to your assigned Tranquility lounger."
"But-"
"Please redress in your-"
Evelyn turned away as it repeated itself, holding up the cleaner suit to her chest. "Okay, fine! Just give us a second."
Charon said sternly as she handed him his own, "I am not wearing that."
"Please, big guy," she begged with that sorrowful gleam in her eye (that'd make him eat his own shit if she asked him to). "Just until we find my dad."
Charon held up the suit. It was going to be a tight fit.
They dressed in the corner and shoved their things in a few lockers, and he scowled as he attempted to stretch without ripping it straight down the seams, but it proved more durable than he would have initially thought. He turned to her as her eyes traveled down south, her lips drawn in a thin line.
"Um…I think that's the biggest size they have," she said a little sheepishly.
He groused as he motioned for her to continue, "I wish to leave this place."
She held over her hand for him to take, her smile just for him. "We will soon. I promise. Thank you, Charon."
He took it. It was warm.
She navigated the halls with ease, something of no great surprise to him. When they reached the lower floor she stopped, and he took in the sight of a large machine stationed in the middle of the atrium, branching from the floor to the ceiling and surrounded by egg-like pods.
"What the fuck?" she said, her fingers tightening. "This…this isn't like my Vault at all."
He suddenly wished he had kept his gun.
"Shall we leave?" he stupidly asked.
Her head shook. "Not without my dad…come on."
The ghoul followed her to the base level, carefully navigating around the machines as she peered inside them, one by one. The husks within appeared to be human (at one point in their lives) but were mostly indistinguishable if not for the vaguely humanoid shape.
"What is this place?" Evelyn came around to another pod, staring at the near-dead occupant. "What the fuck is happening to these people?"
Charon grunted as he directed her attention to the next one- the only one distinguishable from the rest.
"Dad!"
Evelyn dashed forward and beat her hands on the glass, shouting at the blinking smoothskin that wholly ignored them.
"Dad!" she tried again. "Dad, it's me! It's Evelyn! Wake up! Dad!"
The smoothskin didn't acknowledge them; he couldn't hear or see anything beyond the screen.
Evelyn stomped over to the nearest Robobrain and pointed to her father's pod. She ordered, "I need you to wake up my dad, right now!"
The Robobrain computed her request and replied, "Please proceed to your assigned Tranquility lounger."
Evelyn let out a frustrated snarl as she beat on the glass again.
"Wake up, wake the fuck up!" Her voice became angry, like a current of black water in stormy seas. She screamed, "Wake the fuck up, you fucking asshole! How could you fucking leave me down there you piece of shit?! Wake up, wake up, WAKE THE FUCK UP!"
"Evelyn," Charon urged her to the side before she could break her fist. "Calm down."
She had a twin stream of snot and tears running down her face. "He fucking left me down there! He left me for this!"
"You do not know that," he rasped. If he were honest with himself, neither did he, but a panicked employer was a dead employer. He gently held her by the shoulders and said, "Perhaps there is a way to wake him."
And if they couldn't find one…he would make one.
She settled, his cool demeanor chasing her high back down. She finally nodded and wiped her forearm across her snotty face. "Yeah, okay, you're right…I'm sorry."
Charon eyed the Robobrain as she set to work with her investigative skills when the machine rolled to them once more, this time indicating to an empty pod.
"Please proceed to your assigned Tranquility lounger."
Evelyn only had to turn her head to give him a single look, and he snarled, "No."
"It might be the only way to reach my dad!" she exasperated as she immediately stepped over to it, pressing a button that lifted the dome.
"You do not know that," Charon rasped as he pulled her by the hand before she could hop inside. "Evelyn, it could be dangerous."
"I don't know what else to do!"
"Then I shall shoot it."
"No! That could kill him!" She spun around, beginning to climb inside before he snagged an arm around her waist and hoisted her over one shoulder in preparation to make way for the exit. "Charon?! Put me down! Now!"
He complied, dropping her without care. She winced, and he felt a light warning of the contract in his skull, but it soothed once she stood and snapped at him.
"Look, I don't like it any more than you do-"
"Then let us leave."
"-but I'm not going anywhere without my dad, whether you like it or not!"
Charon took a step back and eyed her critically. "You would stay for him, even though he had left you?"
The words smacked her cleanly across the face as all of her anger fell into a puddle of tears for him to cup in his hands.
"Yes…" she said thickly, her words drowning with grief. "I have to."
"You do not."
Evelyn straightened her spine, and quite suddenly, she became collected with some form of resolve she had found. He did not know why she held it so tightly, but she refused to let it go as she said, "We're not leaving here without him. I need him."
Charon stared at her. She stared at him. He broke off first and looked around the room, uncomfortable with the inevitable that was to come. He only looked back when he saw her climb inside the pod, and he quickly strode over to place a hand on her arm.
"If you are to do this…you should prepare, first."
He didn't think she would take the advice until she faintly nodded and climbed back down, her gaze to the far wall.
"You're right…" she said, still avoiding him. "I'll need to discuss your contract should I not wake-"
He growled.
She ignored his sentiments on the matter and continued, "And I should eat something. I feel a little shaky. I also need to use the bathroom, so, feel free to wait here, I guess."
Both ghoul and dog watched her march off in search of the facilities when Charon turned to the mutt (that had decided to pass toxic gas).
"Keep her safe," he rasped.
Charon then climbed into the pod, shifted his overly large frame in the seat, and flexed his hands. The dome of the machine hissed as it closed, sealing him within and concealing everything around, and a screen blinked to life before his face.
…
…
…
Please Stand By