Chapter 84: Herbicide

Chapter 84: Herbicide

The plant roared, snarling and spewing a viscous ichor that rained down on us in a thick torrent of sludge. The whole cavern shook from the sound, and it felt like my eardrums were ready to bust. That's when it brought down the closest of the tree-trunk... vine... tentacles, whatever they were, and started swinging it down - directly on top of our heads.

"SCATTER!" I yelled. I had no idea if anyone even heard me over the deafening roar. I didn't bother to look back; I just gripped the G36 tight and ran as fast as I could. The ground heaved up when the massive tentacle finally hit, and it damn near knocked me off my feet.

I was running on instinct, and right now my instincts were telling me to run, fittingly enough. Not to get away, mind you, but to try and find a way behind it. This plant, whatever it was, was obviously the source of the spores, so the best course of action was to get behind it and try and kill it... somehow. And I felt I was doing pretty well, running around through the thick foliage and popping off a few bursts from the carbine in my hands (the damn thing was so massive, any of the shots aimed vaguely in its direction were bound to hit something).

Of course, that was the moment something grabbed hold of my ankle, and pulled.

I slammed face-first into the ground. Whatever had hold of my leg hadn't let go, and was starting to slither up as it dragged me across the carpet of plants. I pushed up and off, twisting around in time to see three of the normal sized (Hah! Like anything about this was normal!) man-eater plants staring at me; the one in the center was the one latched to my leg.

"Fuck off!" I shouted, aiming the carbine in my hands and letting off a burst of fire. A few bursts of greenish-purple fluid erupted from the man-eater in the center, but it didn't loosen its hold on me. Before I got a chance to fire again, a foot came out of nowhere, stomped down hard on the vine, and an armored form with a fuel tank strapped to his back stepped between me and the plants that were trying to eat me.

"Go!" Arcade yelled, dousing the man-eaters in a stream of liquid fire. In an instant, the cavern wall caught fire and everything green and growing was bathed in a bright orange glow. "I'll deal with these! You need to kill the big one!"

I didn't bother to respond. I just yanked the now motionless vine off my ankle and got back on my feet. The cavern shook again, and I saw the giant plant in the center of the cavern try and lunge at something off to my left. It roared and another cloud of gas erupted from the open maw. I fired round after round into it until the G36 ran dry.

One of the massive tentacles swung through the air, coming perilously close to my head. Reflexively, I ducked just in time to hear a crack like a thunderbolt echo through the chamber. Suddenly, a massive hole appeared in the middle of the tentacle, and a sickly green fluid started gushing everywhere. I tried to trace the source of the shot as I attempted to get out of the way, and managed to catch a glimpse of Boone on the far side of the cavern. He was perched on a high ledge with the Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle in hand.

I tried to think: how many grenades did I have left? I didn't have time to check the exact number; I just grabbed one of the grenades hanging off the harness on my armor, primed it, and chucked it as hard as I could in the direction of the giant plant. There was a bright flash of green light, and a ball of plasma exploded against the side of the monstrous plant. It let out a howl of pain, and when the cloud of plasma-gas finally dissipated enough, I saw that it was bleeding something greenish-brown from a messy gash in the giant stalk right underneath the huge mouth.

It was still smaller than you'd expect from the kind of damage a plasma grenade should cause, but fuck - progress is progress, right?

"Shea!" I heard a gravelly voice yell amid the rumble and roar, and tried to pinpoint it; Keely was off in a corner of the cave, behind the giant thrashing plant. "Get over here!" She yelled, waving me over, before leveling her laser rifle and hitting it with a lance of bright green light.

I started running, changing magazines in my carbine as I ran. The ground shook again, and practically split in half ahead of me as another tentacle burst up and into the air. I dodged, leaping out of the way, rolled under it as it tried to take a swing, and just kept going until I'd slid to a halt in Keely's hideaway. I managed to catch a glimpse of a pair of man-eaters behind her that were riddled with laser burns and obviously dead.

"What?!" I barked, pressing my back into the wall and pulling back the charging handle. "I'm a little busy at the moment!" I took aim, and let out another burst of fire. Off in the distance, I could see a column of fire on one side of the giant plant, and the distinctive glint of metal from Oh, Baby! as Veronica smashed the tentacles near her in half - even the ones as thick as tree trunks.

"That's the source of the spores!" Keely fired two more bursts of green laser fire at the mutant plant before ejecting the spent MF-cell. I pulled another grenade off my chest and threw it - the frag grenade exploded near the base of the plant in a cluster of fire and shrapnel but didn't seem to do much in the way of hurting it.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know, genius!" I yelled back. I was about to fire again, but Keely grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back, deeper into cover. The next thing I knew, she was shoving something metal and cylindrical against my chest.

"The bomb! The plan!" Keely got right in my face, making sure I had a good hold on the bomb she was shoving into my hands. "Set the timer, and get that thing to EAT this! When it explodes, it'll trigger the chain reaction!" I held the bomb against my chest, and Keely grabbed her laser rifle, reloading and firing at the giant plant again. "Go! I'll cover you!"

"How long do I set the timer for?" I asked, suddenly feeling a bit wary and altogether uneasy about holding this bomb. I had no idea how big the blast was going to be - and how the hell was I even going to get the plant to eat it, anyway?

"A minute!" She growled, firing off another laser blast. "Thirty seconds if you're feeling lucky! Just get it in the thing's mouth! The jaws should snap shut just like a regular fly-trap plant! NOW GO!" She grabbed me by the shoulder, and shoved me out of her patch of cover, just as the giant plant roared again, shaking the whole place with the sound. Or maybe it was the fact that it was thrashing so much...

Against every impulse in my brain telling me to run as far away from this giant mutant plant as I could, I found myself running at full tilt toward it, with no weapons drawn and a bomb tucked tightly under my arms like a football. This was not how I was expecting today to go, let me tell you.

The cave shook again, and I saw the giant plant ahead of me - it almost looked like it was trying to uproot itself, the way its whole mass had shifted off to the side. Or maybe it was trying to get away from the fire. I have to hand it to Arcade; he was doing really well - and he was surprisingly agile for someone carrying a 50-pound flamethrower on his back.

A vine crashed down a few feet ahead of me; it was like someone had chopped down a redwood tree. I couldn't even climb over it, it was so massive. I think my only saving grace was that the plant wasn't trying to hit me. Its attention was currently focused on Veronica.

She was practically flying through the air, having launched herself off one of the giant stalagmites, and slammed Oh, Baby! into the top of the plant's... er, head. The plant spasmed, and she dug the handle of her super sledge into the side of its neck on her way down, and left a gushing trail of green as she slid down... and that gave me an idea.

Quick as I could, I punched a minute into the bomb's timer, then pulled one of the combat knives off my boot. Just as the tentacle started to lift up off the ground, I sank the knife into the side as hard as I could and held on tight. My feet left solid ground, and it was like the bottom of my gut dropped out from under me.

This may not have been the best idea after all.

No time to think about that, though. There it was - the snarling, wide-open mouth of the mutant plant, right in front of me like a target. I tried to plant my feet against the side of the thick tentacle, and reared back my hand so I could put as much strength into my throw as possible...

The mutant plant roared, blasting me in the face with a burst of gas that felt like a hurricane. I was knocked off my feet and felt myself tumble for only half a second. The next thing I knew, I was upside down, hanging by my feet as one of the smaller tentacles flailing and squirming out of its open mouth held me in a grip like a vice.

I barely knew which way was up - I just knew that I'd dropped the bomb. The gigantic teeth and spike filled green maw of the plant that had me in it's grip was open wide poised and ready to swallow me whole.

"Eat this!" I yelled, grabbing one of the few grenades left on my chest harness. I tossed the tiny orb into the writhing mass of tentacles. There was a green flash and I was hit with a shockwave as the plasma grenade detonated - and then I was falling.

I'm just glad I was wearing the helmet. Falling on my head didn't do me any favors, but at least it didn't kill me. My head was spinning, and I could barely make out what was in front of me. My head finally stopped spinning long enough for me to register the object only a few inches away from my face:

The bomb. Fifteen seconds left on the fuse.

I summoned every ounce of strength I had left and pushed myself off the ground and swept up the bomb in one swift motion. I looked up and saw the giant plant monster looming down over me. The plasma grenade that went off in its mouth had shredded the tentacles, but hadn't quite obliterated them completely. It was gushing that viscous green fluid, and spraying it everywhere when it roared.

I planted my feet, drew back the hand carrying the bomb, and threw it as hard as I could directly into the center of its mouth. The shredded tentacles all seemed to reflexively wrap around it, and as soon as the metal cylinder was out of sight, the jaws snapped shut.

Everything and everyone seemed to stop at once. The plant stopped thrashing, and its head recoiled back, like it was surprised. Even the flames licking the mutants backside seemed to die down slightly. It pointed its head up at the ceiling, and the neck-stalk convulsed. The gash left by Veronica's trip down bulged outward for half a second, green fluid spraying and gushing out in great torrents - and then the whole thing burst.

The entire side of its neck, right below the oversized head-mouth, was ripped apart from the inside in a massive fireball, sending chunks of plant flesh and yellowish-green goo in every direction. It was a kaleidoscope of color and noise, followed by a second explosion - but not of fire. A huge cloud of blue gas exploded outward, filling the whole chamber. Even after the initial explosion, the plant just kept ripping itself apart...

"Look out!" Veronica yelled, just before tackling me. I'd been so caught up in surprise that something had actually gone right for a change that I'd completely failed to notice the freshly decapitated head of the giant plant monster about to fall on top of me.

"So, is that it? Are the spores all destroyed?" I asked. It was about fifteen minutes later. Keely had led us out of the cave and away from the corpse of the giant mutant plant (which, when we left, had started dissolving into a blue mist). We were now walking through the metal corridors of the Vault.

"I think so," Keely growled a response, rounding a corner. She slid another metal keycard into a slot on the nearby wall, and the door slid up. "I'm just going to have to check something..."

"Can we go already?" Veronica asked, the HEPA filters (still in the hermetically sealed packages, just like Keely said) under her arms.

"I'm with Veronica," Boone said from his spot at the rear-guard. "It was fun at first, but I'm tired of this piss-hole, and I want to go back home."

"So, where'd you get that laser rifle that shoots green bolts?" I asked Keely on the ride back to Camp McCarran. "I've only seen a gatling laser fire green." She was in the back, in the seat behind me. Veronica was riding shotgun, with the filters on her lap. Arcade (as usual) was riding bitch. He did manage to shove the flamethrower and his armor in my car's trunk first, so it wasn't as cramped as it could have been.

"I found it my second day in the Vault. Apparently it's an AER-14. Laser rifle prototype. Focus of 1064 nanometers, second harmonic generation of 532 nanometers, beam divergence of 8.18 picometers per meter. No idea if it was part of the Vault's armory, or if the skeleton holding it was the body of a scavenger who brought it with him. But it's a nice rifle. I think I'll probably keep it." Keely smirked, patting the rifle resting on her lap.

"So, do you do this a lot?" Arcade asked.

"Do what?" Keely turned to him, a confused expression on her face.

"Coming up with plans to save the wasteland without people being any the wiser, so you maintain your anonymity." Arcade said, elaborating. "Does that happen a lot?" Keely shrugged.

"Not really. But 22 isn't the first Vault I've been to..."

"I kind of figured," I said. "You seemed pretty sure of what you told us about the experiments... Where'd you find out about all that stuff, anyway?"

"Here and there. It wasn't one specific Vault that tipped me off - it was a lot of little things in all the Vaults I've been to that all added up to the same conclusion. I think it all started when I found a few files in Vault City, that implied it was a 'Control Vault.' After that... I couldn't help but dig deeper, try and find things out." Keely snorted. "Williams thinks I'm just a scientist, but that's just a hobby, really. I consider myself a Vault Hunter."

"How many Vaults have you been to?" Arcade asked. "I mean, if you don't mind me asking." Keely was quiet for a very long time.

"You know... I've lost track," Keely slumped in her seat, and started rapping her fingers against the armrest in the car door. "I've been to a lot. Probably more than most. Maybe."

"So, what kind of things have you found?" Veronica asked. "Anything as crazy as Vault 22?"

"Depends on your definition of crazy," Keely said with a grim chuckle. "I mean... on the one hand, there was this one Vault I found - 53 - where all the equipment was designed to break down every few months. Apparently, it was intended to 'stress the inhabitants unduly,' but what it ended up doing was causing people to commit suicide en masse after two decades. Most of them that I've been to were like that - little things that ended up causing massive disasters. But then there's places like Vault 69, where there were 999 women... and one man." The car was silent for a very long time. Keely decided to break the silence by adding: "That Vault was always going to end in tears."

"So... was that one the craziest? Or does Vault 22 hold that dubious distinction?" I asked, almost frightened of the answer. Keely snorted.

"I'm not sure... I know there's one I've been to that I still haven't figured out." Keely shook her head. "Vault 77."

"Why?" Veronica asked. "What'd you find there?"

"An empty Vault... and files about the experiment: one man and a crate of puppets."

"What."

"Keely!" Dr. Williams practically yelled. The dark-haired OSI scientist rushed forward and embraced the ghoul in a hug as soon as she made her presence known. "You're alive!"

"Alright, yes, I'm fine," Keely grimaced, trying to wriggle free of Williams' grip. "Let go of me now, please. I'm too squishy for your bear hugs!"

"Oh! Sorry... yeah, forgot." Williams backed off a few feet. "I'm just so happy to see you alive! I feared the worst, I thought something terrible had happened!"

"Strictly speaking, something terrible did happen," I said, as nonchalantly as I could. "But, it all worked out in the end." Williams turned to us, her smile almost audible it was so wide.

"Do I have you to thank for helping Keely get back alive, then?" She asked. I shrugged.

"To be honest, I'd say she's more responsible for saving us than the other way around. It was, after all, her plan that saved the day." Keely smirked.

"I'd say we can all take equal credit on the 'saving the day and each others backsides' front. I would've never been able to pull off that plan on my own if you guys hadn't shown up."

"It's all in a days work; no big deal," Veronica said with a smile.

"Still... I can't thank you enough!" Williams said, positively bouncing. Keely set a hand on her shoulder to keep her still.

"You can thank me in a very specific way." Keely's words positively dripped with menace. "Please tell me that ignorant, self-centered, completely unqualified cloaca Hildern is in his office. There are some very important matters regarding the dozens of people that he sent to their deaths - including me - that I think he and I need to... discuss..."

The next few minutes were hilarious - trying to listen through the walls as Keely just absolutely ripped Hildern a new one, right there in his own office. Sadly, Williams made us promise that we wouldn't hurt him. Shame. I think, after what happened, everyone wanted a crack at him. Hell, I would've been content just holding him down.

"So..." Williams cleared her throat and approached me, a bit uncertainly. That's when I remembered: I'm still wearing my damn helmet! Nobody's shooting at me now, and it's kind of hard to talk to a screen. I pulled off my helmet, and she seemed to relax. "What happened down in Vault 22? What killed all the mercenaries Dr. Hildern sent?"

"Well..." I looked around at all my friends, trying to think of what to say (despite the distraction of the muffled yelling from the next room). "There were a lot of giant mutant mantises..."

"Mutant fly-traps..." Veronica added.

"Corpses reanimated by fungal colonies moving the bodies around..." Arcade chimed in.

"And a giant mutated plant with jaws big enough to swallow us whole and tentacles like tree trunks." I said, thinking I was finishing it off. Williams looked stunned, and utterly disbelieving of everything we were saying.

"So, the usual for us," Boone added. I looked over my shoulder at him, perplexed.

"Wh - was that a joke?" I asked. Boone shrugged, a slight smirk edging into the corner of his mouth.

"Maybe."