Tik-ik. Tik.
"Oh. So, it's gonna be one of those days, is it?"
We hadn't even gotten in sight of Vault 34's entrance, and already the Geiger counter was clicking away. I took off my helmet and looked behind me; everyone was kitted out and looked ready to fight. Boone was wearing the helmet to go along with his Desert Ranger armor, but that was no surprise. What was surprising was that even Cass was wearing the helmet that went with her armor. Both Arcade and Veronica were wearing air filters and goggles.
As I reached into my duster for some Rad-X, Raul came down from the ridge. He was dressed in the Vaquero outfit - since he didn't need anything else to protect him from the rads - but had left his sombrero back on the motorcycle. Apparently, it had been a bit much, trying to maneuver the huge hat in the narrow hallways of Vault 11, and he didn't want to bother with it in any more tight corridors.
"Bueno, malo tiempo de noticias. Good news, bad news, Boss." I popped the pills in my mouth, and tossed the bottle behind me to Boone. I sighed, and put my helmet back on.
"Alright, lets hear it," I said, as soon as I locked the helmet in place. "Good news first."
"Well, I think I've found the entrance." Raul said proudly. Behind me, I could hear Cass mutter something like "Damnit, I just got comfortable in this fucking helmet..." It was obviously her turn to take the Rad-X.
"And the bad news?" I heard Veronica ask from behind me.
"Well..." Raul grimaced, and the unpleasant look was only exaggerated by his lack of skin. "We may have a little trouble getting there..." He motioned for us follow as he headed back up to the top of the ridge.
"Damn," Cass let out a whistle. "That's a lot of ghouls..."
She wasn't kidding. It was like a convention down there, they were so thick. It almost reminded me of the mass of Ghost People I saw after setting off the fireworks in the Sierra Madre. Most of them were wearing scraps of clothes, and even from this distance I could make out the blue and gold of torn Vault jumpsuits hanging loosely off their emaciated and skinless frames.
"So, how're we gonna handle this, Boss?" Raul asked, already loading one of his shotguns. He obviously had suspicions as to how I was going to handle it.
"We could always try sneaking past them?" Arcade offered up. That might work: I thought back to the Sierra Madre, about how Christine and I had gotten past some Ghost People when I'd thrown a grenade in the other direction as a distraction.
I glanced to my right, at Veronica and Cass. Even with both of their faces obscured by respirators and combat helmets, I could tell... both of them were itching to fight. Cass especially: she was holding her AA-12 like she wanted to club somebody with it, rather than shoot them. And who could blame them? All that pent up stress... Hell, I know I was feeling a mite tense after the last few days.
"You know what? Fuck it," I pulled back the charging handle on the G36, and took aim at the mass of ferals below us. "Sneaking is gonna be too complicated. Let's just start here, and kill every motherfucker between us and the door."
"Hell yeah!" Cass said, charging her AA-12. "Now you're speakin' my language!"
The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. After all the madness of the last few days with giant mutant plants, zombie fungus ambushes, a Vault with a history that made me want to vomit, and the mountains of drama and headache that came from dealing with Cass and Veronica, it was nice to finally let off some steam.
Of course, "letting off steam" in this case involved a lot of gunfire, blood, explosions, and a pile of dead ghouls. I wonder what that says about me?
"We all good?" I asked as soon as the last feral went down. Wait, no - what was that military phrase that Boone said I should say in this kind of situation? I tried to think... "Sound off, people!"
"Clear," Boone practically whispered, speaking through the radio in my helmet; he was still up at his perch on the top of the ridge.
"No contacts," Arcade lowered his plasma rifle.
"We're good," Cass chimed in with a thumbs up.
"... uhhn, yeah. Good to go over here," Veronica eventually grunted, after pulling Oh, Baby! out of the ground. Apparently, she'd hit the last feral so hard, the super-sledge had buried itself several inches into the rock beneath her feet.
I looked around, trying to find Raul. He was the only one left, and the only sound filling the uncomfortable silence was the steady tik-tik-ik-tik of my Pip Boy's Geiger Counter.
"Well Boss - ugh - you were right," Raul eventually spoke up, shoving a few dead feral corpses off him. "These ghouls don't seem to like me very much." I rushed over to try and help him up, and it took me a few seconds to register that the entire left side of his face had been slashed to hell. It almost looked like he'd head-butted a belt sander.
"Oh, shit! That - are you okay, man?" I finally spluttered out, helping Raul back on his feet. "Do you need any stimpacks, or... uh..." I trailed off; Raul just waved and shook his head.
"No te preocupes, Boss," Raul flexed his jaw, and rolled his eyes around in his head a couple of times. "Ghouls are healed by radiation, remember? I should be alright in a few minutes..." Sure enough, it looked like a few of a the shallower gashes on his face were starting to mend... at least, as far as wounds on someone without skin can mend, at any rate.
Raul dusted the last of the feral bits off his outfit, picked his shotgun and one of his revolvers up off the ground, and walked away, stepping over a pair of dead ferals in his path.
"Well?" He asked, turning to me with a cracked smirk. "Are we going down there, or what?"
This Vault was an absolute pisshole.
Since stepping through the broken, wide-open Vault door, I hadn't seen a single piece of metal down here that wasn't covered in rust or corroded and all full of holes. Half the time we tried going down corridors, they were blocked off by debris, or were collapsed entirely. Wires and metal were hanging out of the broken ceiling panels, the floors were covered in trash, half-eaten body parts, or radioactive goo that made my Geiger counter spike, and every pane of glass was shattered. Hell, only about half the lights were even working.
And you know what? None of that mattered. I was having a blast. The steady stream of feral ghouls coming at us as we pushed deeper and deeper into the Vault provided a constant hit of adrenaline to my system that wouldn't go away. Not even the sound of the screeching ghouls - echoing off every surface and melting together into a deep, dull roar - could ruin my mood. Fighting them was simple, it was straightforward, it was uncomplicated, and it wasamazing.
"How much further?" Arcade asked as we turned a corner; I heard a burst of plasma fire from behind me. "I'm running low on power cells..."
"You knew we were gonna be fighting today, compañero," Raul fired one of his revolvers down a hallway to the right. "You should've brought more."
"I'm with Arcade on this one," Cass asked, seconds before everything was drowned out by the boom from her AA-12. "How much further till we can turn around and get out've here?"
"I dunno," Veronica shrugged. "I keep seeing signs pointing to the armory, but they keep pointing at collapsed tunnels."
"Aw, fuck!" Cass shouted. "We're gonna be down here for HOURS!"
"How much Rad-X do we have?" Arcade asked, firing his plasma rifle down a nearby corridor. "If we're down here too much longer, we're definitely going to need more."
"Speak for yourself," Raul said with a grim chuckle. "I'm sure I'll be fine long after all of you succumb to radiation sickness."
"You know, I kinda feel bad for you guys," I opened one of the nearby sliding metal doors, and was immediately face-to-face with a pair of ghouls, wearing the tattered remnants of Vault security armor. The one in front started to screech, so I kicked it square in the chest and sent it toppling backward - directly into the one behind. I emptied the G36 into the two ferals, and they collapsed in a bloody heap on top of each other. "You don't know a good time when you're having it!"
There was a noticeable pause from behind me. Cass was the one to break the silence.
"Dude. We're in an underground maze, surrounded by radiation, and feral ghouls that want to rip out our insides and have them for lunch. I think you're having way too much fun."
"Yeah, maybe," I said, turning to face her. I held up a finger. "But you're forgetting one simple fact about this little expedition of ours:" Cass didn't say anything; she just cocked her head to the side. "They're not shooting back." Cass paused, and even though I couldn't see her face behind the helmet, I could practically hear the gears in her head turning.
"Alright, yeah, I'll give you that one."
"It is a refreshing change of pace, not being shot at," Arcade chimed in. "But, all things considered, I'd rather be reading a book in an easy chair than being in a situation where 'people shooting at me' is one of the options."
"We should keep moving," Boone growled from within the Desert Ranger helmet. "We'll run the risk of the Rad-X wearing off if we don't."
I gave Boone a nod, stepped over the two dead ferals blocking my path and into a large two-story room. There was a giant hole melted out of the back half of the floor, a collapsed and inaccessible catwalk, and there was debris blocking off one of the exits. Despite all that, I was reminded of the room in Vault 11 with the holographic recording of the man giving the speech, or the room in Vault 3 where we'd discovered the prisoners the Fiends had captured.
With any luck, this was close to where we needed to be. However... In Vault 3 and Vault 11, the Overseer's office had been near the room that looked like this, but we'd seen this same kind of room overrun by plants in Vault 22, but hadn't been able to find the office in the place it should have been. The room itself was familiar, sure, but the path getting to it was not. The layouts for all the Vaults were drastically different from one another, and I still couldn't figure out why. Why would Vault Tec give each Vault a unique layout? Was it just another part of whatever fucked up experiments they were running?
"Fuck," Cass spoke up. "Is this another dead end? Please tell me this isn't another fucking dead end..."
"I have some rope," Veronica said. "If we find something to tie it to, we could always go through the hole, find out where it leads." As she spoke, Raul walked to the hole and looked down.
"You don't happen to have flares as well, do you chica?" Raul looked up as he spoke to Veronica. "Because I can't see the bottom..." He paused, then looked back down the hole. "... or maybe that's just my eyes acting up again."
"You know, you complain about your eyes more than your knees," Cass chuckled as she walked up to Raul, leaning over to look into the hole.
"Do I?" Raul started stroking his scabby chin with a smirk on his face. "That's strange, my knees always give me the most trouble."
While everyone filed past me into the atrium, I couldn't help but look around and stay rooted in place. Something was wrong. I don't know how, or why I suddenly felt that, but I knew something wasn't right, because the bottom of my stomach seemed to fall out - just like it always does when things are about to go tits up.
"Hey Sheason," Arcade said, walking over to me. "What a-"
"Shhh!" I hissed behind my helmet, and held up a finger. "Shut up. You guys hear that?"
There was a moment of silence, as everyone started looking around.
"I don't hear anything," Cass spoke up.
"Exactly," I gripped my G36 tighter. "The ghouls have stopped making noise."
That's about the time a door on the second floor of the atrium exploded. I spun around just in time to see a tidal wave crashing down on us... a tidal wave of shredded metal and yellowish-green fire. I frantically vaulted backward out of the way, shooting into the quickly dispersing mass of fire, smoke and ash - and the trio of ghouls leaping out of it. Part of me wanted to shout something about glowing ones, but I couldn't even hear myself think over the noise of gunfire and screaming ghouls.
As soon as he hit the ground, the glowing ghoul in front started to charge me. Even though the explosion was nothing more than smoke and ash by now, the whole room was still lit up, thanks to the trio of ghouls and their bright yellow glowing insides shining through their skin. The one coming at me had its eyes and mouth wide open, shining like flashlights.
The bark of gunfire sounded off all around me. I fired a trio of slugs dead center in the middle of the ghouls chest, but it didn't seem to even notice. Within seconds, it had closed the gap and latched onto me with his talon-like hands, screaming in my face, and not even burying the barrel of the G36 deep in its gut and holding down the trigger could detach him.
And that's about when the glowing one let off its party piece.
A hum filled my ears, followed by a very loud bang, and my whole body was hit with a massive shockwave. It felt like I'd been hit in the chest with a wrecking ball, and I went tumbling head over heels through the air. Everything went sideways and upside down. All I could see was the same yellowish-green fire that blew up the door, and the noise was so deafening that I could barely hear my Pip Boy's Geiger counter clicking away madly.
My G36 was knocked out of my hands on the trip down, and I had no idea where it went. I hit the ground hard and felt myself slide against metal before finally coming to a halt. I shook my head to try and get my vision to clear, and I suddenly realized that I was currently hanging headfirst over the edge of the giant hole. I grabbed Roscoe off my thigh and pushed off against the floor to get away from the dark abyss and back on my feet. By then, another glowing one (or, maybe it was the same one, I don't know) appeared, screeching and glowing so bright I thought it was ready to explode.
Before I got a chance to line up a shot, however, the glowing one was knocked violently out of my field of view. Raul had appeared from nowhere, tackled the glowing one from behind, and the two of them went tumbling into the dark hole at my feet. There was a crash, another muffled explosion, and a flash from within the gaping chasm.
"Raul!" I shouted, looking down the hole after him. On the downside, both he and the ghoul were out of sight. On the plus side, they were obviously still close enough for the glowing one to light it up. It wasn't nearly as long a fall as I initially thought; it just dropped into a hallway only one floor below. Without any further hesitation, I pulled out That Gun from behind me and jumped into the hole with both guns drawn.
And for all my enthusiasm, I was still a bit late.
"Oh... hey Boss..." Raul sounded a bit out of breath. And no wonder - the glowing one was lying in a crumpled, twisted heap at Raul's feet. It almost looked like it's neck had been snapped. Small patches of yellow-green fire were still smoldering along the edges of the hallway, and my Geiger counter was still ticking away. "Sorry about that. Didn't think you'd be able to take another blast like that. I didn't scare you, did I, Boss?"
"...Raul?" I asked hesitantly, lowering my guns and starting to move forward - and then deciding against it. "Are you... y'alright?" Raul looked down at himself quizzically, as if only just then realizing that his skin was emitting wisps of yellow-green smoke, and his insides were lit up beneath his skin. He wasn't quite as bright as the dead glowing one at his feet, but... the effect was still there, and it was unsettling. Especially when he looked back up at me with a pair of glowing eyes like lit candles.
"Oh! This?" He waved it off. "Estaré bien. It'll wear off. In... an hour. Or two." He let out a single, very loud hacking cough, complete with a puff of yellow smoke. "Just... don't get too close, alright Boss?"
I didn't get a chance to respond. At that precise moment, a glowing one hit the rim of the hole right above me - after flying through the air upside down - and snapped in half with a loud crunch, falling down right next to me. I looked up to see Veronica standing at the edge of the hole, yellow gore stained super-sledge in hand.
"We're all clear up here," she said casually, like she was talking about getting the mail. "Are you two alright down there?"
"Uh..." I looked back at Raul. He seemed completely unfazed by the fact that he was still glowing and emitting colored smoke. "Sort of?"
"You dropped this," Cass appeared at the edge of the hole, and knelt down to hand me my G36. "You should be more careful with your toys." Even though I couldn't see her face, I knew she was looking smug.
"Thanks." I took it with a nod.
"Hey, Boss!" Raul spoke up, pointing at the wall. "Would you look at this! A sign on the wall pointing to the armory - and the hallway isn't collapsed!"
"Look on the bright side," Raul grinned back at me over his shoulder, and I groaned inwardly. "At least with me in the lead, you won't need any more flashlights!"
"Seriously man," I kept pace a few feet behind him. "Are you sure you're going to be okay? I mean... glowing isn't healthy. At least, I don't think it's healthy. Arcade, back me up on this. Glowing isn't healthy, right?"
"It's fascinating, is what it is!" Arcade said with enthusiasm - but still behind me. "I had no idea the bio-luminescence of glowing ones was communicable! Has this ever happened before? If you're still glowing when we get back to the Lucky 38, can I run some tests on your-" Mercifully, Arcade was cut off before he could get too far.
"Seriously. Locos. I'm fine. Just absorbed a few too many rads all at once, it'll wear off soon." Raul shook his head and sighed. "Deja de preocuparte."
"I'm with Raul on this one," Cass chimed in. "He doesn't look any worse for wear than Jason Bright. Remember him?"
"I remember he wanted to go into space," and constantly spouted off illogical religious nonsense like the inside of his brain was rotten, I decided not to say.
"Forget that," Boone spoke up suddenly. "Is anyone else concerned that we haven't run into any more ghouls?" I had to admit, Boone had a point. We'd been walking down this twisting corridor for maybe 15 minutes, and we hadn't seen a single ghoul since the glowing ones.
"Maybe we killed them all?" Veronica offered up hopefully.
"Could be they learned to steer clear of the heavily armed intruders. They might be feral, but I doubt they're all suicidal..." Raul mused aloud, coming to a stop at a door next to a pile of rubble and refuse. "Or maybe it's just dumb luck. Either way, Boss, I think we're here." Sure enough, the illuminated sign above the door said "ARMORY" in big block letters. The door was rusted, and looked like it hadn't been touched in several decades.
"Alrighty then..." Raul moved out of the way as I stepped forward, trying the control panel next to the door. There was a clunk, and it squawked at me. "Yep. Locked. Thought it might be." I cast a glance behind me, over my shoulder. "Boone, you've got the charges, right?" Boone's only reply was a curt nod before reaching into his duster.
"Wait, charges?!" Arcade asked, a bit of worry creeping into his voice. "Like, explosives? Those kind of charges?" I nodded.
"Figured the armory door might've been locked, so rather than spend half our lives on a wild goose chase for a terminal or keycard to open it that might not even exist anymore, I thought we'd just... cut out the middle man. With a block of C4." By the time I finished explaining, Boone had finished placing the explosives on the door, and handed me the detonator.
"You might want to step back," Boone said before calmly walking around the nearby corner. The rest of us swiftly followed, and when everyone was behind the corner, I flipped open the safety on the detonator.
"Fire in the hole?" I squeezed the trigger, and immediately the hallway was filled with fire. At first, I thought that there hadn't been any noise at all - but then, when all I could hear was ringing, I realized the explosion was just so loud that I'd been rendered temporarily deaf. On the plus side, the door had seemingly evaporated (once all the smoke cleared), and all that was left was a smoldering, smoking hole in the wall.
"I think that got it," I said aloud, shaking my head to try and get my hearing back. By the time I stepped through the hole in the wall, I could hear well enough to catch this little gem from behind me: "I'm not sure you made it loud enough, Boss."
"Alright," I said to myself, waving away what was left of the smoke. "Let's see what we can..." I trailed off, finding myself at a loss for words.
There were almost as many guns down here as there were in the Gun Runner's armory. Maybe more, and that's saying a whole hell of a lot. Assault rifles, carbines, submachine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, body armor, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, grenades, explosives, ammunition...
"Holy fuckin' glorious mother of shit!" Cass was obviously not lacking for something to say. "We've hit the mother lode!" Behind me, I heard several indistinct murmurs of agreement.
"Alright, start looking," I said, shouldering my rifle, and scanning the weapon racks and piles of guns. "The Pulse Gun is an energy weapon, so it should stand out like a sore thumb down here. Once we grab that, we can turn... around... and..." For the second time in as many minutes, I was rendered speechless. All around me, I could hear the boots of my compatriots coming to a stop behind me, obviously as captivated as I was...
"Damn." Boone was the only one who spoke up.
It was a Fat Man. A shoulder mounted, tactical nuclear catapult was just... sitting there. Out in the open. Along with three football sized mini nukes. Slowly, carefully, I took hold of the Fat Man, and set it on my shoulder, just to try it out. It was surprisingly light - I was expecting it to weigh a ton and a half, but it didn't seem any heavier than the anti-materiel rifle. Bit more cumbersome perhaps, but...
"It's definitely you," Cass said with a chuckle, nodding approvingly.
"Screw it," I said, refusing to set down the Fat Man. They couldn't see it beneath the helmet, but I literally could not stop smiling. "We take it all. Everything we can carry. No sense leaving it down here for the ferals, right?"
"Wait, all of it?" Arcade blurted out. "What, do you think we're all pack brahmin or something?"
"I'm pretty sure he thinks we all are," Raul chimed in from his spot near the exploded door.
A few hours later, after a quick dose of Rad-Away and a shower, Veronica and I were in the kitchen. Most of the haul was in the spare room (along with all the other weapons we'd collected over the past few weeks and had yet to sort through), but there was one thing sitting square in the middle of the table: the Pulse Gun.
It was a small tube with a pistol grip on the bottom, and a dish-emitter on the end instead of a barrel. It was made mostly out of unpainted, silvery metal, except for the copper tubes on the top surrounding the mounting point for the small energy cells it obviously used as ammo. Despite the fact that it was supposed to be a weapon that was the bane of powered armor everywhere... it seemed very unassuming.
"So..." I leaned against the table, looking at the pistol. "This is it, huh?" Veronica nodded, standing across from me with her arms folded across her chest. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing... just..." Veronica shrugged. "I dunno. I thought there'd be more dials and buttons on it and stuff."
"Who cares what it looks like?" I said. "It's the electronic equivalent of a disease from Gomorrah."
"Assuming it actually works," Veronica leaned against the back wall. "It's not like we have a spare set of power armor to test it."
"Well, there is that armor you wear under that robe of yours," I said with a smirk. Veronica's sullen expression did not change.
"I said a spare. I'm not giving up a one-of-a-kind piece of hand built tech just for a weapons demo."
"That's what I figured you were going to say," I grabbed the pulse gun off the table, and made my way past her. "Which is why I've provided an alternative arrangement." Veronica looked at me curiously as I walked to a panel next to the kitchen door. It was a new panel that had only been installed just the other day; I hit the 'talk' button with the side of my fist. "Yes Man, you reading me?"
"Oh! Hi there!" Yes Man's cheery voice sounded off from the speaker. "How are you doing today? Was your trip successful?"
"Good, the intercom works..." I muttered with a smile before clearing my throat. "Yes it was. Could you send a Securitron up to the Presidential suite, like we agreed on earlier? Oh, and one thing: make sure you're recording telemetry."
"Absolutely! One target practice dummy, coming right up! I think this is a great idea!" There was a click, a burst of static, and the intercom shut off. Less than a minute later, the elevator doors opened and a Securitron with Yes Man's face rolled out.
"Hi there! How can I -" Before he could finish, I fired the Pulse Gun point blank. There was a flash of blue electricity, and a weird inverted popping noise that was quickly drowned out by the sound of sparks. Lightning undulated and rippled all around the outside of the robot for the half second it remained upright - and then it fell backward with a crash, the face-screen exploding from the inside.
As the robot lay there on the ground, smoking away, Veronica walked up beside me. I twirled the Pulse Gun around in my hand, and offered it to her grip-first.
"Well, at least we know it works now," she said, taking the weapon. For the first time since we found it, Veronica almost cracked a smile.