Chapter 28 Apparitions
Rosie tossed and turned, caught in the grasp of a vivid nightmare.
The light had been left on, like always, in her childhood bedroom on the family deck of the Vault. Frantic noises from the next room woke her.
“Where is it?!” The woman supposed to be her mother yelled as Rosie pretended to be asleep. She tossed through Rosie’s simple toys made from scrap. “You little bitch! Where is it?” The woman grabbed her slender wrist and dragged her from the bed.
“I don’t know, let me help you look.” Rosie already knew how to handle a desperate addict. “That hurts, I can’t help if you're hurting me.”
“Don’t give me that.” The woman snarled and yanked her small arm harder. “There was half a can here this morning, what did you do with it?!”
“Nothing, I don’t know. You’re hurting me!” The woman squeezed harder, her emaciated fingers digging into the child's wrist.
Normally Rosie would be passive, calm, this time she wasn’t. “You probably huffed it and forgot!” Talking back got Rosie a slap, it only made her angrier. “I hate you! I wish you were dead! LET GO!” Rosie pulled free of the cruel hand as the woman pulled at her. Her weak body recoiled backwards, tripping over a toy truck left tossed on the ground. The woman's head hit the steel wall with a stomach churning crack and her body slumped. Rosie saw red on the wall. Then the power went out. “Momma?” The small and frightened voice pleaded in the dark. “Momma?” She tugged at a limp hand.
The next thing she knew someone was carrying her along a corridor. Someone tall and strong, while a boy held her hand. John and his father had come for her, like they always did when the power went out.
Voices drew her to the crack in the door while John slept. His father sat talking with a Vault Sec officer.
“No, Rosie had a sleep over here tonight. I went to check on Daisy when the power went out and called you guys.” The security man left and John’s father saw her peeking through. He knelt and hugged her. “It’s ok Rosie, it’ll all be ok. I promise.”
Rosie still felt half asleep. She could feel a rhythmic thrum in the room coming from the close walls and cold floor. Something seemed familiar but she couldn’t say what, at least until she opened her eyes.
Steel walls, floors and ceiling. A small room in a Vault. She stood letting the soft bedding fall away. Her panic shifted down a gear as saw the miniature reactor through thick glass. The source of the thrum and power for the private Vault beneath the lighthouse. She was in the decontamination chamber, a room made to walk through and access the reactor. Her hip had been bandaged, along with her wrist, both of which hurt.
“If that girl dies for your stupid fucking games Bran, we’re done.” Rosie couldn’t hear Charlie yelling through the glass, but she could see into the next room and her lip reading had improved.
“I didn’t send her in, I would never hav—” Brandon looked like he’d been on the receiving end of Charlie’s fear turned to anger for a while.
“You know full well you didn’t have to send her anywhere. She would, correction, she did run into hell for you and for what?! To chase down some fucking raiders! I should take her a thousand miles from here.” Charlie took some iv bags and walked away from Brandon. As she did she saw Rosie standing up.
Rosie reached down for a blanket to cover herself and it made her wrist hurt. Then she remembered why. She pounded on the glass with both hands, opening up the cuts on her wrist.
“Janey!” Charlie picked up a handset from the control console directing Rosie to one on the wall. The iv of cloudy orange liquid tugged at her arm as she reached over.
“It’s alright, Janey’s next door, got her in foam.” Charlie switched to a calm tone in an instant. She held the handset out for Brandon but didn’t look at him, or let him take it.
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“I checked her over, she seems fine, but we haven’t booted her up yet. We didn’t want to do it without you.” Brandon’s knowledge of bots put Rosie at ease, at least as far as Janey was concerned. “Another couple of hours in the foam, then she’ll be cooking and telling jokes like nothing happened.”
“Foam?” Rosie asked, distracting herself for a moment.
“Yeah, de-con foam.” Brandon held something that looked like a fire extinguisher, only dull green instead of red. “Expands into the cracks and hardens. It soaks up the rads then you break it away. Your suit’s in there too.”
“You’re lucky you aren’t in there kiddo.” Charlie took the handset away before Brandon finished talking. Rosie understood why she found herself in the narrow room. “You took a real dose Rosie...frankly you should be dead.” Charlie scowled at Brandon. “That shit ate through the filters, and you’ve got some in your blood.”
“How long?” Rosie’s panic began to ratchet up.
“We’ve got enough Radaway to flush your system.” Charlie didn’t give her the answer.
“How long?”
“Someone will be with you day and night.”
“How long?”
“Three days.” Charlie knew Rosie struggled with three minutes back underground.
“That’s good, I can still meet John.” Rosie had been counting the days for three months. Now her own stupidity had cost her. As she opened her eyes Rosie saw a look on Charlie’s face. “Just tell me.”
“You were out for a day and a half, you’re supposed to meet him tomorrow.” Charlie's words hurt more than her hip. Rosie slumped, her head resting against the glass.
“Matt volunteered to wait for him, but…” Brandon hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry Rosie, I said no. We don’t even know if he’ll get off base, and we don't know if he's being followed.”
“I understand.” Rosie couldn’t ask them to risk more. It would have been easier to get angry and lash out, blame those around her but that wouldn’t be fair. And she could see that they’d been through enough. “I’m sorry. I fucked up.”
“Yeah, we all do from time to time.” Brandon looked to Charlie as he spoke. He turned his attention back to Rosie, keeping his tone soft. “What happened out there?” In that moment a flash of the horror came back to her. She looked around the narrow room. Pillows and blankets had been brought in, a bucket with a lid that she ignored for now, and some scrap paper with charcoal sticks. She dove on the floor and started drawing.
“We don’t give a shit about the operation Rosie.” Charlie thought she might be upset. “We just need to know why you went—” Charlie stopped as Rosie slammed the rough paper against the glass. It wasn’t her best drawing but they clearly recognised it.
“Super mutant.” Brandon pulled up a chair and sat next to Charlie. “They were people once. Then they got infected with a man made virus. Changes them into…Abominations.”
“‘To meet my maker’. That’s what he said.” Rosie saw the other two look at each other like she’d said something wrong.
“Rosie, when they change it breaks their mind. They might talk but it’s crazed ramblings, they’re like beasts.” Charlie tried to dissuade her, subtly suggesting that she’d imagined things. Brandon however, said nothing.
“I know what happened. This wasn’t something crazed. It took the drums from the ruins. It laid a trap for me, then it started hurling crystals while I ran.” Rosie tried to access the recordings but found them corrupted. Rosie stared at Brandon, as did Charlie, waiting for him to say something.
“There are cases in the Archive, a handful at most, of mutants retaining their memories after the change.” Brandon’s information from the Brotherhood’s repository of knowledge brought shock, fear, and disgust to Charlie’s face in equal measure. Rosie had never seen her look this scared, not even when Matt lay bleeding to death on the kitchen table. “These…Apparitions are another kind of dangerous.”
“Yeah.” Rosie thought that still sounded like an understatement. “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
“Frankly Rosie, we didn’t think to.” Brandon looked disappointed with his own complacency. “They’re rare this far west. We doubted you’d ever see one, why keep you up at night.”
“If you really want to lose sleep buy me a drink and ask me what a Cazadore is.” Charlie spoke into the handset, making her point in an almost light hearted way. Rosie started to understand there were many threats out in the wastes, and no one could be aware of them all.
“What are we going to do?” Charlie asked Brandon without pressing the button on the handset. Rosie banged on the glass, already frustrated with what she could see becoming a recurring issue.
“We need to tell Clarke.” Brandon knew the Brotherhood needed to be told, but the furrowed brow and hunched shoulders suggested that it may not be that simple. “Let me think on it. Right now you need to rest. Both of you.” He put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Get some sleep, come get me in twelve hours.” She nodded and took the handset.
“Rosie, change that iv bag in six hours. Do you want something to help you sleep?”
“No.” Rosie didn’t want another nightmare.
“I don’t blame you, radaway fever dreams are the worst. Try and rest though, keep your pulse and bp down, it’ll help.” Charlie stifled a yawn, poorly, and left. Rosie could see how tired she looked.
“Rosie,” Brandon stared into her eyes, his face and voice stern. “You do anything that stupid again and the closest you’ll get to an operation is packing gear.”
“Yes Boss.” Rosie didn’t need to be told twice, the hole in her hip would serve as a suitable reminder.
“Good. Now, get comfortable.” Brandon ran his finger down the stack of books on the table, sliding free one bound in blue leather.
“‘Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.’” Rosie listened to Brandon read a book he knew well, trying to picture the old, old world, and not the horrors of this one.