L
lockout
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6~Six~6
The Light Of Day
Ten minutes later, the west wind was gusting hard and hot, whistling faintly through the stands of dead conifers along a washed out gravel service drive just south of the caves entrance to Vault 13. A row of fresh sand dunes at the foot of a stone outcropping was swept off to the east, while Justin sat atop that same dusty ledge, the sweat stains under his arms spreading in dark blue ovals while his heels drummed the granite surface, the lines of perspiration on his forehead beginning to dry, when finally, he looked up, absorbed by the depths of his own ineptitude.
A tawny dust devil rose around him, spinning and swirling, spitting dirt, forcing him to shield his eyes. He blinked the film away, and wiped his face…his hand came away streaked with red. Mumbling under his breath, he wiped his hand on the rock and ignored the drive, instead turning recent events over in his mind.
The cave walls were fairly solid – that much he knew. He could tell from the burn on his cheeks that he had left part of his face on one of them, and he could only hope that the scratches wouldn’t become infected before he came down with a case of rabies or radiation poisoning.
What a great way to start the day.
And what about a little triage, he thought, dabbing the end of his nose. And where was his first aid kit? Ha-ha-ha. When you wish upon a star…and be careful what you wish for. And all that. He breathed deeply, and then held it, counting to himself, forcing himself to relax. A day a time, a breath at a time, he thought, and then blew it out in disgust.
It wasn’t working.
Outwardly placid, he was fuming inside. His jumpsuit had been spotless when he donned it something like an hour – a lifetime? – ago. Now it looked like someone had used it to scrub the floors.
“With me in it”, he said coldly, never so wholly aware of his life, of his own presence, as he was at this moment. There was a basis for comparision: it was back in the caves.
Ed Jamison was dead. Very dead, Justin thought disjointedly, circling the thought cautiously, as if Ed’s condition might be catching. He found Ed’s body near the outer door when it was pulling closed – and sealing off most of the light. And, the Colt on his lap was still just a wee bit warm – that was from the cave rats that saw him before he’d seen them. Now they’re very dead, so they aren’t part of it, Justin thought, his fingers working nervously at the stainless steel chain hanging around his neck, an ornament he had worn since early childhood. What a timely coincidence. Right now he felt like a child. A very foolish child.
Mr. Chain had popped out earlier – surprise! – when he was being careless and stupid, and now he was looking at the 1x2-inch card, dangling stiffly from the end of it, mirroring his first-ever view of natural sunlight on this early blue-sky day that seemed not as bright as it should have.
He plucked the card off his chest and began turning it over in his hands, his eyes thoughtfully drawn to the machined printing beneath the clear plastic. Someone looking over his shoulder would have seen this:
Marshall – Justin Anthony
VID: 208-198-71-164
DOB: 12 FEB 2139
HT: 1.85m / 73in
WT: 83.90kg /185lbs
EYES: brn
HAIR: brn
SCARS/MARKS: none
The card was new so all the info on it was correct. Gotta keep all them charts current, his mind rattled on. It had been issued to him sometime during the hubbub of yesterday, just another Vault-Tec standard he had forgotten about until a few minutes ago. But since then he had been reminded, too well…and his shiny ID card was in a lot better shape than the one he found on Jamison.
The bottom half of that one – the Scars/Marks half – was gone. It was cracked and faded, but the name and Vault ID number on it were very legible.
It was Ed, Justin thought. Or at least the name on the tag said it was. The Ops maestro himself, a gifted storyteller, and the reigning clown prince of the Vault…now a moldering skeleton, skull a grimacing rictus, the fingers on one outstretched hand hidden beneath four deep furrows…clawing…buried in rock hard soil up to the second knuckle.
Ed’s gun was gone. But, there was a rusted knife with the initials “E.J.” carved into the handle. Yes sir, Justin thought peevishly. There was that…and a box of 10mm APs he found, when he kicked over a mangled chunk of pack. That and a few yellow-on-blue tatters were all that were identifiable.
It was hard to take –
But there were teeth marks on Ed’s bones. “And you ignored it,” Justin said to no one. “You didn’t use your head, moron…you didn’t think.” He had been camped by the Vault entry terminal, pawing through the the box of APs. Just checking out bullets, he thought musically. Just hangin out at the terminal, woolgathering and distracted, his head stuffed a foot up his ass, wondering where Ed had got them, where he had been and why he had them, without a gun to with them…
And that was when the rats had come after him.
They were mutated, but they weren’t all that big – the largest of the ruby-eyed pricks was maybe three feet long – but with his then-present state of stupid, they caught him completely flat-footed. Rats were supposed to slink off to dark corners but these were sleek, plump and extremely aggressive. And hungry…they thought he was a snack.
But they were stupid to boot, more so than he had been. And that, Justin thought, is what saved you. He was leaning against the ledge, his left leg drawn up, shoe off, pissed off, looking at the bite marks above his ankle. There were two half-rings there, he saw, to his festered annoyance. Puncture marks: nine or ten clean holes on either side of his Achilles. The flesh there was an angry purplish red; he pressed his fingers against it…it was swollen and puffy to the touch. It hurt like hell, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
Small victories, he thought. A handful of sterile swabs and some iodine would have helped the celebration, but he decided that he’d live. He could walk. No autopsy, no problem. And, he had fared considerably better than the last man. That was something. He put his sock back on and thought that Mr. Rat had worked him over pretty good…for a second. Until he woke up and learned how to fight back.
Guns, he knew well enough to know that the Colt wasn’t that accurate, and that he was no sharpshooter. And there were the dim caves – just to make it challenging. He had kicked at the rat instinctively in that moment of panic after it bit him – and connected. It backed off with a low, mewling sound, then he shot at it as it veered away…and missed. That had been pointless.
It was too dark to see clearly, and more rats were closing by then – so he let them. He backed down the south corridor, grabbing flares and clips…until he spun around in the dark and kissed a cave wall.
That was when he had scratched his nose and cheeks. Good move, he thought, looking up at the service drive. At least he knew his back was covered when he finally got himself righted and started peeling the paper off a flare. He lit it and tossed it onto the cavern floor, and then waited for them to come into the light.
They had, eventually. The rats had probably picked up his scent, but that hadn’t stopped the ugly shits from following the flare like it was beacon – it was almost too easy after that. Working side to side through the east-west caves, he burned the rest of the flares and stayed down in the shadows, until the rats got close enough for him to take advantage of the light and closer range. Then he picked them off, one at a time until it was clear.
Splat! he thought viciously. No more rats. That was that.
What he didn’t understand was, there had been enough of the damn things to swarm him, and for whatever reason other than sheer stupidity, they hadn’t. He suspected that that had been Jamison’s downfall, but he and Ed were…had been…about the same height and build. And the rats had still been all over him – just twenty feet from the outer door. Christ, what a horrid way for anyone to die, Justin thought. Like there was ever a good way?
He couldn’t think of one…and didn’t want to. The image of those raking teeth marks was all he had to understand. That would stay in his mind for a long while. He knew that he had snared a huge break, in spite of himself. There was no reason to expect any more in the offing, and believing that cat-sized rats would be the worst of it was pure foolishness –
And what about the next time?
There would be. And daydreaming then would likely come at a high cost. But that would be difficult to resist, he knew. All of this was new and compelling. Even the caves held a strange fascination, once the rats had been dispatched. He had seen pockets of mica and quartz, buried behind a fine blanket of dust along the timeless granite walls…and the bleached animal bones, heaped on the caves floors like a makeshift potter’s field; too cracked and weathered to even guess what creatures they may have been. There was a queer sense of timestop in it for him, a feeling of events lost, that had somehow returned…like the crystal formations he had seen in a high domed chamber near the west corridor, their brittle tips sparkling sapphire and sterling in the swelling light of day. As the silver and blue steeple rose around him to an unseen peak overhead, he felt as if he had wandered into an abandoned ballroom, cast off and forsaken by the ages…or a narthex in a lost cathedral…complete with chandelier and stone pews, and stalagmites for the pulpit.
All it needed was a minister. And a fresh congregation, he thought, with a last rueful look at his steadily throbbing ankle. The fascination was undeniable, but keeping one’s self intact was a far greater concern.
“Best to focus on the task at hand,” he said irritably, relacing the soft-soled loafer, while he studied the PipBoy. The Personal Information Processor was RobCo’s donation to old brown-box technology. At least Vault-Tec hadn’t made it: that was something in itself. It was a compact bit of nothing, designed strictly for portable information storage and retrieval – for logging reports mostly, but it could handle downloads from disks and holotapes.
The burnished top on this one was scratched and dented but it swung open easily enough, revealing his badly outdated list of California/Nevada map files, and a black tri-fold screen inside. A small amber light in the lower left corner labeled “Standby” switched to bright green, “Ready”, as the screen popped up and unfolded.
Justin loaded his current location, then looked the display over again. The map data was detailed, but it was also old – which again raised his gnawing concerns about what kind of shape the war had left the roads in. Every clarification breeds new questions. Some guy named Murphy had supposedly coined that catchall phrase. Justin wondered if old Murph would be as witty, right now. The upshot of today was, there were no guarantees. Josh had ventured south before turning southeast toward Vault 12…although no one knew if he had actually…and nobody had the faintest idea of what route Ed had taken. With no feedback to work with, all he and the Ops gang could do, was assume that most if not all of the divided highways and expressways would be in poor condition, or outright impassable.
That left all those secondary roads, running hither and yon across the fabled mountain regions between the old Death Valley and Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks. Just a run through the park, Justin said to himself. With an itty bitty gun. At least the Death Valley route was new – which he felt was decent in itself. And, most of it ran far enough north of the Badwater Basin, so that being swatted by extra strength-sapping heat shouldn’t be a problem.
But the cruise would likely be a quiet one, people-wise, he thought, pushing himself off the ledge. And that he objected to. Progress and people were a tandem set of wheels – you couldn’t find the former without running across the latter. They went together like mismatched bookends.
He was thinking of this, as he started down the service drive. It was warm and bright and quiet, and the rising heat began to tug harder at his fears, as he sidestepped the washouts and arterial-like ruts in the hard-packed surface of the drive. Dead trees and gravel were all he saw, while he walked and waved the blowing dust from his face. He wiped a drop of sweat from his eyes and thought it was too quiet, then he remembered the map overlay in Ops. Sure, he told himself. There were a lot of miles to go – it was early on and there was no need to worry. It was quiet, but there was a reason for it. With the colossus Sierra Nevadas looming to the southwest and the neighboring Inyo Mountains east, Vault 13 had been plopped down in a harsh, isolated territory that featured just five pre-war towns within a ten-mile radius.
That was four burghs more than Vault 15 could boast of. Naturally, there wouldn’t be a lot of people or activity, and he had his own suspicions as to why.
He swept southwest along the drive, setting a moderate pace, not looking back, thinking of how he had worried over that bit of old fluff when he and Herm were reviewing the trip data. He had eased over to central display while the downloads were chugging along, watching and musing as his route began to show up as a brilliant ruby line, weaving eastward – always – surrounded by several large, unidentified zones, all of them clearly highlighted on the broad, flat screen.
The drive ended with a sharp dogleg left, and now he veered into it, kicking a stone pile out of his way, recalling the blank zones, so void of locales that stuck out like a sore thumb. Only the geographic maps had been up then. He had already seen the political layouts, and so he had accessed the military database in Ops and then overlayed its site maps on the central display. Just for shits and giggles.
He had never held much interest in deployment or tactics – anything dealing with the mechanics of war bored him to tears. He knew the annals and what had ensued. He could recite multiple warhead yield counts with the best of em, but he had deliberately limited his strategic grasp of that drivel to how those events had influenced the international side of it. Although now, he thought the strategic side of things then seemed…a little more important today.
There were two naval air weapons stations near China Lake…and Fort Irwin Military Reservation, just south of the Death Valley Park. And, there was Nellis Air Force Range, east of that. Nellis was home to the Nevada Test Site, the cratered proving grounds for thousands of old fusion toys.
Vault 15 was buried near the top of it, on the northern fringe of Yucca Flat. Oooh, lookie what I found, Justin thought. All of the test shots that used to be done at the NTS were moved to the Central Nevada Test Area after the world had come down with its second case of nuclear fever. That left the surrounding ground around where Vault 15 was built free of extra radioactive contamination for the last hundred-plus years, but that amount of time wasn’t nearly enough for some isotopes that took billions of years to decay.
And the bonus was, he got to hoof it across that hunk of real estate and take in all the sights – without a Geiger counter or any anti-radiation drugs. He was thinking of this as the gravel and stone pinged softly under his feet. It seemed to be the only sound. He saw another dead conifer standing off the drive, and thought that his trip was shaping up to be a thrilling one. And, there would be tons of mesa and highlands for him to sightsee. Nellis alone covered more than 3 million acres – over 12,000 square miles of vacant airspace.
The surrounding territory had been a jarhead’s playground – all within attack copter distance of Vaults 13 and 15.
Step on it, if you please, he thought now, the pack swaying lightly against his back as he stopped at the mouth of the narrow service drive. Even though it was distant from Vault 15, all of the the military activity, the lack of neighborhood locales, and no all-clear signal had always made Vault 13’s chosen spot seem just a little off center to him. That and the flocks of old-time bureau heads who hadn’t been known for coughing up six hundred billion bucks a pop for a Vault on a whim.
And that’s all water under the bridge as it were, he thought. Done and done, yet another rerun. Bitch all he wanted, and still, nothing had changed – it was there, and he had to cover it. The old hobnobbers had set the course, but now they were as dry and lifeless as the terrain they had left behind.
A quiet terrain, Justin thought with sudden unease. Very quiet. He looked at the chunks of gray asphalt beneath his feet…the spidery cracks in the road were full of sand and weeds. And it was quiet, as he turned and stared at the deep gullies in the service drive, silently wondering if the other roads would be as bad…as hushed…as this first pair.
He hoped not: that would make for a royal tour. He imagined that no one had used either road since the days before the war. Eighty-five years, he thought, the number a loop in his mind…and him riding the back side of it, the drive looking like it hadn’t seen a repair crew for at least that long. Not that highway maintenance would ever again be anyone’s concern. Except for the low spots, it was a swaybacked channel: the dirt on it had washed out entirely. The ditches were caked with branches and twigs and hardened runoff, tinder-dry clutter that was sixty years older than he was.
And he hadn’t seen a trace of human presence along that quarter-mile stretch. No vehicles or tire tracks anywhere. No footprints. Nothing.
Nothing here either, he saw –
Where have you gone, my brothers in arms?
The thought made him feel queasy, and there were no soothing clues to be had. Now, yonder drive was more of a trail than a road, just stumps and bare trees around an overgrowth of dry scrub and sickly-looking weeds, ending here, at a twisted guardrail on the far shoulder of Big Pine Rd.
Where he was going. And beyond – that’s what he had in mind, after a quick detour to see what all was left – although in what he now saw, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if this was all there was.
He was perched on the guardrail, shirtsleeves flapping in the crosswind, watching a grayish-brown trickle of the Owens River, as it wound around crusty slabs of old rockslides. From here, the river looked to be loaded with floating debris and algae and silt and who knew what else. An army transport 6x6 lay overturned on the far river bank, like a dead mastadon from another era. Justin shook his head. The air was dry, as if humidity had become nonexistent, and the first water he was seeing in the great out of doors wasn’t enough to make a splash.
The wind gusted, sharp and hot, and now the fear began to nibble at him, as he scuffed the dirt with his shoe and thought that none of what he’d seen looked very promising. There weren’t many towns in the area before but now, it just seemed too still. He took his glasses off, squinting beneath the sun, while he mopped the sweat off his face. It was running off him faster than the pissant river, and he could taste the salt tang of himself, mixed with the dust in the air. An early appetizer…bon appétit, he thought with no humor, his eyes narrowing to watery slits, while the dust clouds scoured his face.
Then the wind dropped and the stillness was his alone, as he turned and saw the splendid, snow-capped peaks of Mount Whitney; the ageless sentinel, its frost-lined face a glittering dot, far to the south. The snow will melt in the spring, it came to him, then what he feared most did, as his mind pulled back a ragged, flapping curtain behind his eyes.
The snow could melt and reform until the next Ice Age, and it would make no difference. The land was empty. The cities were gone; people were gone. All of it was gone. The curtains flapped and blew, but there was nothing behind them.
Nothing.
There would be water there, he thought, fighting a sudden, stinging bite of panic. And where there was water, there would be life. He looked back at the empty service drive, his head jerking around like a puppet on a string. Or a rope to cling to…No! he roared at himself, forcing the thought away, as the wind blustered and the sand swayed and slithered, snakelike, at his feet.
His hands were trembling as they seized the lip the guardrail. There would be water there. There would be, he thought. And there will be life; there will. Perhaps even some normal wildlife had survived…because it couldn’t be just him and the rats. It couldn’t be…
Because if was it was true…
No…he wouldn’t think about that right now. He was freaking himself out bad enough as it was. Maybe there were deer up there, he thought. Big old mule deer…herds of them, he thought, gathering all of his reasons why there should be. There would be water…and Jamison had found some bullets that weren’t regular issue. There was that and that meant that there were people and…there was water up there. There would be hunters and families and some pronghorns and marmots…and squirrels and jackrabbits…black bears…bighorns…birds and bees…butterflies…nature; Life as a whole…anything but just rats.
He looked back at the conifers along the drive. They were black spikepoles, just dead branches seesawing in the wind. He looked up at the stone ledge around them. They were bare: no seedlings or saplings. But he wanted to see a tree. A green one. He wanted badly to see one. Just one…a nice, big leafy oak, not these blackened logs and petrified stumps. Or stand beneath a bristlecone up in the hills…maybe.
The curtain flapped as he stared into the empty blue sky. Vacant airspace, he thought, craning his neck overhead. No clouds, he thought fearfully. Just blue. And blue…and blue. But he wanted to feel rain falling on his face…he wanted to taste a raindrop, and there were no clouds…only blue. He wanted to see a bird…any bird…anywhere…just flying around. There used to be millions of them, everywhere. They couldn’t all be gone, not all of them…no. He wanted to hear it…just one…singing in that big, green tree…
But there was none of that here, he saw. There was only solitude, wrapped in total desolation.
And it was quiet.
“Where are the people!?!” he shouted, cringing, as his voice rolled across the dead chaparral in the ravine. “Where is all of it!?!”
…all of it…
…of it…
…it.
The sound of his own fading echoes was the only reply.
It couldn’t be. He looked out over the rail, searching for Zurich, the tiny whistlestop below a rise to his right –
It was out of view.
He jerked his head back, staring straight ahead…and there; farther down, at the base the ravine, lay the asphalt road’s namesake…Big Pine, Herm’s tourist haven from a before-time world none of them had ever known. Standing high above it, the sweat glistening on his brow, his line-of-sight magnified, telescoped by the clear, chalk-dry air, he could see patches of metal and glass, glittering faintly between the trees…
And no movement.
Anywhere…
…it’s only a short distance…
…there was no debating it.
Justin turned right instead of left. There are people out here, he told himself, hustling to SR 168. They were out here. Of course they were. All he had to do was find them…and that reassurance of knowing that his own kind was still around…that they had been up to something during the last four generations.
It was warmer, and he was running when he hit 168 then swung left; west onto the cobbled road. Pushing himself in the heat, blocking the other out, he was standing in Zurich in minutes…and staring at the flat barren ground in a gutted burgh that wasn’t worth stopping for.
It wasn’t there any more. It just wasn’t there.
He hadn’t expected to see a lot, but Zurich had been razed…leveled. Just slab piles of bricks and burnt-out frame houses overgrown by scraggly fields of the same brown weeds. And there were no signs that anyone had ever set foot on it again –
No…no…no. No way.
With something resembling dread, Justin quickly left Zurich behind, muttering to himself as he maneuvered around the slippery footing on a gigantic rockslide south of the demolished town. Then he was brushing himself off and muttering under an empty blue sky, skirting more ruts and chuckholes, spewing a rising haze of dust, as he headed down the shoulder of 168…
To Big Pine…where the signs of life he suddenly needed so much to see might be.
The Light Of Day
Ten minutes later, the west wind was gusting hard and hot, whistling faintly through the stands of dead conifers along a washed out gravel service drive just south of the caves entrance to Vault 13. A row of fresh sand dunes at the foot of a stone outcropping was swept off to the east, while Justin sat atop that same dusty ledge, the sweat stains under his arms spreading in dark blue ovals while his heels drummed the granite surface, the lines of perspiration on his forehead beginning to dry, when finally, he looked up, absorbed by the depths of his own ineptitude.
A tawny dust devil rose around him, spinning and swirling, spitting dirt, forcing him to shield his eyes. He blinked the film away, and wiped his face…his hand came away streaked with red. Mumbling under his breath, he wiped his hand on the rock and ignored the drive, instead turning recent events over in his mind.
The cave walls were fairly solid – that much he knew. He could tell from the burn on his cheeks that he had left part of his face on one of them, and he could only hope that the scratches wouldn’t become infected before he came down with a case of rabies or radiation poisoning.
What a great way to start the day.
And what about a little triage, he thought, dabbing the end of his nose. And where was his first aid kit? Ha-ha-ha. When you wish upon a star…and be careful what you wish for. And all that. He breathed deeply, and then held it, counting to himself, forcing himself to relax. A day a time, a breath at a time, he thought, and then blew it out in disgust.
It wasn’t working.
Outwardly placid, he was fuming inside. His jumpsuit had been spotless when he donned it something like an hour – a lifetime? – ago. Now it looked like someone had used it to scrub the floors.
“With me in it”, he said coldly, never so wholly aware of his life, of his own presence, as he was at this moment. There was a basis for comparision: it was back in the caves.
Ed Jamison was dead. Very dead, Justin thought disjointedly, circling the thought cautiously, as if Ed’s condition might be catching. He found Ed’s body near the outer door when it was pulling closed – and sealing off most of the light. And, the Colt on his lap was still just a wee bit warm – that was from the cave rats that saw him before he’d seen them. Now they’re very dead, so they aren’t part of it, Justin thought, his fingers working nervously at the stainless steel chain hanging around his neck, an ornament he had worn since early childhood. What a timely coincidence. Right now he felt like a child. A very foolish child.
Mr. Chain had popped out earlier – surprise! – when he was being careless and stupid, and now he was looking at the 1x2-inch card, dangling stiffly from the end of it, mirroring his first-ever view of natural sunlight on this early blue-sky day that seemed not as bright as it should have.
He plucked the card off his chest and began turning it over in his hands, his eyes thoughtfully drawn to the machined printing beneath the clear plastic. Someone looking over his shoulder would have seen this:
Marshall – Justin Anthony
VID: 208-198-71-164
DOB: 12 FEB 2139
HT: 1.85m / 73in
WT: 83.90kg /185lbs
EYES: brn
HAIR: brn
SCARS/MARKS: none
The card was new so all the info on it was correct. Gotta keep all them charts current, his mind rattled on. It had been issued to him sometime during the hubbub of yesterday, just another Vault-Tec standard he had forgotten about until a few minutes ago. But since then he had been reminded, too well…and his shiny ID card was in a lot better shape than the one he found on Jamison.
The bottom half of that one – the Scars/Marks half – was gone. It was cracked and faded, but the name and Vault ID number on it were very legible.
It was Ed, Justin thought. Or at least the name on the tag said it was. The Ops maestro himself, a gifted storyteller, and the reigning clown prince of the Vault…now a moldering skeleton, skull a grimacing rictus, the fingers on one outstretched hand hidden beneath four deep furrows…clawing…buried in rock hard soil up to the second knuckle.
Ed’s gun was gone. But, there was a rusted knife with the initials “E.J.” carved into the handle. Yes sir, Justin thought peevishly. There was that…and a box of 10mm APs he found, when he kicked over a mangled chunk of pack. That and a few yellow-on-blue tatters were all that were identifiable.
It was hard to take –
But there were teeth marks on Ed’s bones. “And you ignored it,” Justin said to no one. “You didn’t use your head, moron…you didn’t think.” He had been camped by the Vault entry terminal, pawing through the the box of APs. Just checking out bullets, he thought musically. Just hangin out at the terminal, woolgathering and distracted, his head stuffed a foot up his ass, wondering where Ed had got them, where he had been and why he had them, without a gun to with them…
And that was when the rats had come after him.
They were mutated, but they weren’t all that big – the largest of the ruby-eyed pricks was maybe three feet long – but with his then-present state of stupid, they caught him completely flat-footed. Rats were supposed to slink off to dark corners but these were sleek, plump and extremely aggressive. And hungry…they thought he was a snack.
But they were stupid to boot, more so than he had been. And that, Justin thought, is what saved you. He was leaning against the ledge, his left leg drawn up, shoe off, pissed off, looking at the bite marks above his ankle. There were two half-rings there, he saw, to his festered annoyance. Puncture marks: nine or ten clean holes on either side of his Achilles. The flesh there was an angry purplish red; he pressed his fingers against it…it was swollen and puffy to the touch. It hurt like hell, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
Small victories, he thought. A handful of sterile swabs and some iodine would have helped the celebration, but he decided that he’d live. He could walk. No autopsy, no problem. And, he had fared considerably better than the last man. That was something. He put his sock back on and thought that Mr. Rat had worked him over pretty good…for a second. Until he woke up and learned how to fight back.
Guns, he knew well enough to know that the Colt wasn’t that accurate, and that he was no sharpshooter. And there were the dim caves – just to make it challenging. He had kicked at the rat instinctively in that moment of panic after it bit him – and connected. It backed off with a low, mewling sound, then he shot at it as it veered away…and missed. That had been pointless.
It was too dark to see clearly, and more rats were closing by then – so he let them. He backed down the south corridor, grabbing flares and clips…until he spun around in the dark and kissed a cave wall.
That was when he had scratched his nose and cheeks. Good move, he thought, looking up at the service drive. At least he knew his back was covered when he finally got himself righted and started peeling the paper off a flare. He lit it and tossed it onto the cavern floor, and then waited for them to come into the light.
They had, eventually. The rats had probably picked up his scent, but that hadn’t stopped the ugly shits from following the flare like it was beacon – it was almost too easy after that. Working side to side through the east-west caves, he burned the rest of the flares and stayed down in the shadows, until the rats got close enough for him to take advantage of the light and closer range. Then he picked them off, one at a time until it was clear.
Splat! he thought viciously. No more rats. That was that.
What he didn’t understand was, there had been enough of the damn things to swarm him, and for whatever reason other than sheer stupidity, they hadn’t. He suspected that that had been Jamison’s downfall, but he and Ed were…had been…about the same height and build. And the rats had still been all over him – just twenty feet from the outer door. Christ, what a horrid way for anyone to die, Justin thought. Like there was ever a good way?
He couldn’t think of one…and didn’t want to. The image of those raking teeth marks was all he had to understand. That would stay in his mind for a long while. He knew that he had snared a huge break, in spite of himself. There was no reason to expect any more in the offing, and believing that cat-sized rats would be the worst of it was pure foolishness –
And what about the next time?
There would be. And daydreaming then would likely come at a high cost. But that would be difficult to resist, he knew. All of this was new and compelling. Even the caves held a strange fascination, once the rats had been dispatched. He had seen pockets of mica and quartz, buried behind a fine blanket of dust along the timeless granite walls…and the bleached animal bones, heaped on the caves floors like a makeshift potter’s field; too cracked and weathered to even guess what creatures they may have been. There was a queer sense of timestop in it for him, a feeling of events lost, that had somehow returned…like the crystal formations he had seen in a high domed chamber near the west corridor, their brittle tips sparkling sapphire and sterling in the swelling light of day. As the silver and blue steeple rose around him to an unseen peak overhead, he felt as if he had wandered into an abandoned ballroom, cast off and forsaken by the ages…or a narthex in a lost cathedral…complete with chandelier and stone pews, and stalagmites for the pulpit.
All it needed was a minister. And a fresh congregation, he thought, with a last rueful look at his steadily throbbing ankle. The fascination was undeniable, but keeping one’s self intact was a far greater concern.
“Best to focus on the task at hand,” he said irritably, relacing the soft-soled loafer, while he studied the PipBoy. The Personal Information Processor was RobCo’s donation to old brown-box technology. At least Vault-Tec hadn’t made it: that was something in itself. It was a compact bit of nothing, designed strictly for portable information storage and retrieval – for logging reports mostly, but it could handle downloads from disks and holotapes.
The burnished top on this one was scratched and dented but it swung open easily enough, revealing his badly outdated list of California/Nevada map files, and a black tri-fold screen inside. A small amber light in the lower left corner labeled “Standby” switched to bright green, “Ready”, as the screen popped up and unfolded.
Justin loaded his current location, then looked the display over again. The map data was detailed, but it was also old – which again raised his gnawing concerns about what kind of shape the war had left the roads in. Every clarification breeds new questions. Some guy named Murphy had supposedly coined that catchall phrase. Justin wondered if old Murph would be as witty, right now. The upshot of today was, there were no guarantees. Josh had ventured south before turning southeast toward Vault 12…although no one knew if he had actually…and nobody had the faintest idea of what route Ed had taken. With no feedback to work with, all he and the Ops gang could do, was assume that most if not all of the divided highways and expressways would be in poor condition, or outright impassable.
That left all those secondary roads, running hither and yon across the fabled mountain regions between the old Death Valley and Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks. Just a run through the park, Justin said to himself. With an itty bitty gun. At least the Death Valley route was new – which he felt was decent in itself. And, most of it ran far enough north of the Badwater Basin, so that being swatted by extra strength-sapping heat shouldn’t be a problem.
But the cruise would likely be a quiet one, people-wise, he thought, pushing himself off the ledge. And that he objected to. Progress and people were a tandem set of wheels – you couldn’t find the former without running across the latter. They went together like mismatched bookends.
He was thinking of this, as he started down the service drive. It was warm and bright and quiet, and the rising heat began to tug harder at his fears, as he sidestepped the washouts and arterial-like ruts in the hard-packed surface of the drive. Dead trees and gravel were all he saw, while he walked and waved the blowing dust from his face. He wiped a drop of sweat from his eyes and thought it was too quiet, then he remembered the map overlay in Ops. Sure, he told himself. There were a lot of miles to go – it was early on and there was no need to worry. It was quiet, but there was a reason for it. With the colossus Sierra Nevadas looming to the southwest and the neighboring Inyo Mountains east, Vault 13 had been plopped down in a harsh, isolated territory that featured just five pre-war towns within a ten-mile radius.
That was four burghs more than Vault 15 could boast of. Naturally, there wouldn’t be a lot of people or activity, and he had his own suspicions as to why.
He swept southwest along the drive, setting a moderate pace, not looking back, thinking of how he had worried over that bit of old fluff when he and Herm were reviewing the trip data. He had eased over to central display while the downloads were chugging along, watching and musing as his route began to show up as a brilliant ruby line, weaving eastward – always – surrounded by several large, unidentified zones, all of them clearly highlighted on the broad, flat screen.
The drive ended with a sharp dogleg left, and now he veered into it, kicking a stone pile out of his way, recalling the blank zones, so void of locales that stuck out like a sore thumb. Only the geographic maps had been up then. He had already seen the political layouts, and so he had accessed the military database in Ops and then overlayed its site maps on the central display. Just for shits and giggles.
He had never held much interest in deployment or tactics – anything dealing with the mechanics of war bored him to tears. He knew the annals and what had ensued. He could recite multiple warhead yield counts with the best of em, but he had deliberately limited his strategic grasp of that drivel to how those events had influenced the international side of it. Although now, he thought the strategic side of things then seemed…a little more important today.
There were two naval air weapons stations near China Lake…and Fort Irwin Military Reservation, just south of the Death Valley Park. And, there was Nellis Air Force Range, east of that. Nellis was home to the Nevada Test Site, the cratered proving grounds for thousands of old fusion toys.
Vault 15 was buried near the top of it, on the northern fringe of Yucca Flat. Oooh, lookie what I found, Justin thought. All of the test shots that used to be done at the NTS were moved to the Central Nevada Test Area after the world had come down with its second case of nuclear fever. That left the surrounding ground around where Vault 15 was built free of extra radioactive contamination for the last hundred-plus years, but that amount of time wasn’t nearly enough for some isotopes that took billions of years to decay.
And the bonus was, he got to hoof it across that hunk of real estate and take in all the sights – without a Geiger counter or any anti-radiation drugs. He was thinking of this as the gravel and stone pinged softly under his feet. It seemed to be the only sound. He saw another dead conifer standing off the drive, and thought that his trip was shaping up to be a thrilling one. And, there would be tons of mesa and highlands for him to sightsee. Nellis alone covered more than 3 million acres – over 12,000 square miles of vacant airspace.
The surrounding territory had been a jarhead’s playground – all within attack copter distance of Vaults 13 and 15.
Step on it, if you please, he thought now, the pack swaying lightly against his back as he stopped at the mouth of the narrow service drive. Even though it was distant from Vault 15, all of the the military activity, the lack of neighborhood locales, and no all-clear signal had always made Vault 13’s chosen spot seem just a little off center to him. That and the flocks of old-time bureau heads who hadn’t been known for coughing up six hundred billion bucks a pop for a Vault on a whim.
And that’s all water under the bridge as it were, he thought. Done and done, yet another rerun. Bitch all he wanted, and still, nothing had changed – it was there, and he had to cover it. The old hobnobbers had set the course, but now they were as dry and lifeless as the terrain they had left behind.
A quiet terrain, Justin thought with sudden unease. Very quiet. He looked at the chunks of gray asphalt beneath his feet…the spidery cracks in the road were full of sand and weeds. And it was quiet, as he turned and stared at the deep gullies in the service drive, silently wondering if the other roads would be as bad…as hushed…as this first pair.
He hoped not: that would make for a royal tour. He imagined that no one had used either road since the days before the war. Eighty-five years, he thought, the number a loop in his mind…and him riding the back side of it, the drive looking like it hadn’t seen a repair crew for at least that long. Not that highway maintenance would ever again be anyone’s concern. Except for the low spots, it was a swaybacked channel: the dirt on it had washed out entirely. The ditches were caked with branches and twigs and hardened runoff, tinder-dry clutter that was sixty years older than he was.
And he hadn’t seen a trace of human presence along that quarter-mile stretch. No vehicles or tire tracks anywhere. No footprints. Nothing.
Nothing here either, he saw –
Where have you gone, my brothers in arms?
The thought made him feel queasy, and there were no soothing clues to be had. Now, yonder drive was more of a trail than a road, just stumps and bare trees around an overgrowth of dry scrub and sickly-looking weeds, ending here, at a twisted guardrail on the far shoulder of Big Pine Rd.
Where he was going. And beyond – that’s what he had in mind, after a quick detour to see what all was left – although in what he now saw, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if this was all there was.
He was perched on the guardrail, shirtsleeves flapping in the crosswind, watching a grayish-brown trickle of the Owens River, as it wound around crusty slabs of old rockslides. From here, the river looked to be loaded with floating debris and algae and silt and who knew what else. An army transport 6x6 lay overturned on the far river bank, like a dead mastadon from another era. Justin shook his head. The air was dry, as if humidity had become nonexistent, and the first water he was seeing in the great out of doors wasn’t enough to make a splash.
The wind gusted, sharp and hot, and now the fear began to nibble at him, as he scuffed the dirt with his shoe and thought that none of what he’d seen looked very promising. There weren’t many towns in the area before but now, it just seemed too still. He took his glasses off, squinting beneath the sun, while he mopped the sweat off his face. It was running off him faster than the pissant river, and he could taste the salt tang of himself, mixed with the dust in the air. An early appetizer…bon appétit, he thought with no humor, his eyes narrowing to watery slits, while the dust clouds scoured his face.
Then the wind dropped and the stillness was his alone, as he turned and saw the splendid, snow-capped peaks of Mount Whitney; the ageless sentinel, its frost-lined face a glittering dot, far to the south. The snow will melt in the spring, it came to him, then what he feared most did, as his mind pulled back a ragged, flapping curtain behind his eyes.
The snow could melt and reform until the next Ice Age, and it would make no difference. The land was empty. The cities were gone; people were gone. All of it was gone. The curtains flapped and blew, but there was nothing behind them.
Nothing.
There would be water there, he thought, fighting a sudden, stinging bite of panic. And where there was water, there would be life. He looked back at the empty service drive, his head jerking around like a puppet on a string. Or a rope to cling to…No! he roared at himself, forcing the thought away, as the wind blustered and the sand swayed and slithered, snakelike, at his feet.
His hands were trembling as they seized the lip the guardrail. There would be water there. There would be, he thought. And there will be life; there will. Perhaps even some normal wildlife had survived…because it couldn’t be just him and the rats. It couldn’t be…
Because if was it was true…
No…he wouldn’t think about that right now. He was freaking himself out bad enough as it was. Maybe there were deer up there, he thought. Big old mule deer…herds of them, he thought, gathering all of his reasons why there should be. There would be water…and Jamison had found some bullets that weren’t regular issue. There was that and that meant that there were people and…there was water up there. There would be hunters and families and some pronghorns and marmots…and squirrels and jackrabbits…black bears…bighorns…birds and bees…butterflies…nature; Life as a whole…anything but just rats.
He looked back at the conifers along the drive. They were black spikepoles, just dead branches seesawing in the wind. He looked up at the stone ledge around them. They were bare: no seedlings or saplings. But he wanted to see a tree. A green one. He wanted badly to see one. Just one…a nice, big leafy oak, not these blackened logs and petrified stumps. Or stand beneath a bristlecone up in the hills…maybe.
The curtain flapped as he stared into the empty blue sky. Vacant airspace, he thought, craning his neck overhead. No clouds, he thought fearfully. Just blue. And blue…and blue. But he wanted to feel rain falling on his face…he wanted to taste a raindrop, and there were no clouds…only blue. He wanted to see a bird…any bird…anywhere…just flying around. There used to be millions of them, everywhere. They couldn’t all be gone, not all of them…no. He wanted to hear it…just one…singing in that big, green tree…
But there was none of that here, he saw. There was only solitude, wrapped in total desolation.
And it was quiet.
“Where are the people!?!” he shouted, cringing, as his voice rolled across the dead chaparral in the ravine. “Where is all of it!?!”
…all of it…
…of it…
…it.
The sound of his own fading echoes was the only reply.
It couldn’t be. He looked out over the rail, searching for Zurich, the tiny whistlestop below a rise to his right –
It was out of view.
He jerked his head back, staring straight ahead…and there; farther down, at the base the ravine, lay the asphalt road’s namesake…Big Pine, Herm’s tourist haven from a before-time world none of them had ever known. Standing high above it, the sweat glistening on his brow, his line-of-sight magnified, telescoped by the clear, chalk-dry air, he could see patches of metal and glass, glittering faintly between the trees…
And no movement.
Anywhere…
…it’s only a short distance…
…there was no debating it.
Justin turned right instead of left. There are people out here, he told himself, hustling to SR 168. They were out here. Of course they were. All he had to do was find them…and that reassurance of knowing that his own kind was still around…that they had been up to something during the last four generations.
It was warmer, and he was running when he hit 168 then swung left; west onto the cobbled road. Pushing himself in the heat, blocking the other out, he was standing in Zurich in minutes…and staring at the flat barren ground in a gutted burgh that wasn’t worth stopping for.
It wasn’t there any more. It just wasn’t there.
He hadn’t expected to see a lot, but Zurich had been razed…leveled. Just slab piles of bricks and burnt-out frame houses overgrown by scraggly fields of the same brown weeds. And there were no signs that anyone had ever set foot on it again –
No…no…no. No way.
With something resembling dread, Justin quickly left Zurich behind, muttering to himself as he maneuvered around the slippery footing on a gigantic rockslide south of the demolished town. Then he was brushing himself off and muttering under an empty blue sky, skirting more ruts and chuckholes, spewing a rising haze of dust, as he headed down the shoulder of 168…
To Big Pine…where the signs of life he suddenly needed so much to see might be.