Chapter 126: Condemned To Repeat It

Chapter 126: Condemned To Repeat It

FUCK! How could this have happened?! Running for my life from who the fuck knows how many toothy, scaly, snarling murder machines hot on my heels! Definitely don't want to be here!

And things had been so quiet fifteen minutes ago...

After my brush with the deathclaw, I managed to reach the end of the High Road without any further incident. At any rate, I didn't run into anything else trying to kill me. It wasn't completely free of unease, however the sun was sinking rapidly below the horizon, and I needed to find some shelter, and fast, before dark.

The refuge I eventually found barely qualified as shelter at all: just a campfire, a bedroll, and a few duffel bags full of supplies. It was built into the wreckage blocking a collapsed tunnel, almost exactly opposite the entrance to the High Road. I wouldn't have even noticed it if ED-E hadn't suddenly flown on ahead, and directly into a nearby shipping crate sticking out of the wreckage next to the camp. I followed him up, and then found reason stay (at least for a while): more of Ulysses' graffiti, painted in blue on one of the rocks near the camp.

What the hell, I thought to myself as I proceeded to rummage through the bags for any supplies. This place seems horribly exposed, with no visible defense against Marked Men, deathclaws, tunnelers, or even sandstorms... but if it was a good enough place for Ulysses to make camp, it was good enough for me. Maybe I was just talking out of my ass, but frankly I was too weary to worry about the dangers. This hadn't been my longest day ever not even close! But this day had already been extremely exhausting, and I needed to get some rest.

While searching for anything useful, I stumbled across another log with a .22 on the label. Hardly surprising, given the graffiti. I was just about to settle in, grab one of the MREs I'd found, and listen to both logs I'd found on the High Road when I was interrupted by the sound of voices from inside the nearby shipping container. Oh that's right, ED-E had gone in there, hadn't he?

"All due respect, sir, I think you're making a mistake." I heard Whitley's recorded voice echoing off the metal walls when I stepped into the shipping crate. ED-E was hovering near the back, focused intently on a poster mounted on the wall: another one of the RALPHIE the Robot posters.

"We're close to a breakthrough with the Duraframe Eyebots I can -" Whitley paused, and then sighed. "Yes sir. Yes sir, I understand that we need the Duraframe asssets for Hellfire armor, but-" He halted mid-sentence to pause again. "No sir." Another pause. "Yes sir, I understand, sir. I'll tell the team to start disassembling the ED series prototypes right away..." There was a click of metal against metal, and he let out a heavy sigh. "What the ED-E, you little rascal! Were you eavesdropping again?" Whitley chucked to himself. "I think those videos you watch are a bad influence on you. How much of that did you hear?"

"Almost all of it," ED-E said in time with his recorded voice, creating a strange sort of echoing stereo sound.

"I'm sorry, little buddy," Whitley replied. "Hmm... Hang on. Didn't Dr. Grant say that she upgraded your navigational systems?" He paused, as if thinking. "You know, I think I have an idea. ED-E? How'd you like to be just like RALPHIE?" And with that, the recording clicked off. ED-E hovered in place for a few seconds, just staring at the poster in silence.

"Sounds like Whitley was a bit of a rogue element," I said, breaking the silence. I had to hold back laughter when ED-E wobbled frantically in midair. "I'm beginning to see where you get it from."

"Er... yes. Yes, Friend_Courier. He did not want all of his creations to be destroyed, and cannibalized for parts. So, he engineered a situation that would allow me to escape." I nodded with a smile, gently patting his chassis.

"I think I would have liked him," I said. ED-E seemed to nod, the sounds of several things clicking inside his chassis were echoed by the acoustics of the shipping container.

"Thank you, Friend_Courier. If given the choice, I believe he would have gladly joined you on your mission to make the wasteland a better place."

"Do you know what happened to him?" I asked. I wasn't sure if I'd asked him that before. Had I asked him that before? ED-E shook back and forth.

"I do not, Friend_Courier. After departing Adams Air Base, I severed all contact with existing Enclave frequencies, in accordance with his plan for my escape."

"Hmm," I grunted out. ED-E went back to staring at the poster. I had to change the subject, get him out of this funk. "So, do you record everything that's said around you?" Immediately, ED-E perked up. That seemed to do the trick.

"Oh, yes indeed, Friend_Courier! Recording the world around me is an integral part of my programming. It was the feature meant to set the Duraframe Model eyebots apart from the standard binary drone_eyebot counterparts. Since travelling with you, I have acquired large quantities of recorded data on combat, social cues, and even human mating calls."

It took me a minute to process that last part.

"I... you... what?!" I finally blurted out. "Are you shittin' me?"

"I wouldn't mind hearing some of those..." Sue said suddenly, a slight waver in her voice.

"No! Sue, no!" I felt on the verge of an aneurysm. "That's just... no, this is neither the time or place for..."

"Are you sure, Friend_Courier?" ED-E tilted to the side, apparently confused. "I have some recordings of yourself and Cassidy_Rose that may prove inter -" Without warning, the perverted robotic voyeur came to a dead stop mid-sentence and went stiff as a board.

I was suddenly very conflicted. On the one hand, I was glad that he shut up before saying anything else. It was just me (okay, yes, and Sue) here, and I was still embarrassed! But, on the other hand, I was also worried: I thought Ulysses might have grabbed hold of him again.

As it turned out, the reality was far, far worse.

"I am tracking movement below us, Friend_Courier," ED-E said. "Multiple signatures. 200 meters and closing fast." And just like that, I was no longer exhausted!

"Damn!" I grabbed the flare gun from inside my duster, and rushed out of the metal shipping crate; ED-E buzzed my head to get out first, and started circling the area. I was just about to leave this place and not look back, but then, halfway down the pile of rubble, a thought struck me: had I grabbed the holotape? I skidded to a half and doubled back, scrambling back up the rocky hill. Sure enough, it was sitting on the end of the bedroll, and I managed to snatch it mere second before the ground shook beneath my feet.

"We must leave!" ED-E called out after me. "They are here!"

The rock beneath the bedroll exploded, tearing it to shreds. There was a flurry of claws, teeth, and chitin right in the middle of the exploding fountain of concrete and rubble, and what was to be the first of many tunnelers appeared. It stared at me with those six glowing eyes on its head, and let out a screech, opening up as wide as its bifurcated jaw would allow. Since the sun had only just set, it wasn't nearly as dark as it had been underground earlier, so I (unfortunately) got a good look right down its gullet.

All I could see down its throat was row after row of sharp, pointed, curved teeth... barbs, spines, thorns, whatever you want to call them. There was simply no end. It was teeth all the way down.

My finger was already on the trigger of the flare gun. There was a burst of powder and a small, white hot ball of light shot out of the flare gun, vomiting red smoke in its wake. The flare hit the tunneler right in the middle of its face. It flailed onto its back, thrashing and letting out the most awful, howling, ear-splitting screech. I pulled out the Ranger Sequoia and did the best I could to aim at the constantly moving, partially-obscured-by-red-smoke tunneler.

One shot was all it took. The thrashing mass of chitin was blown backwards, and the screeching gave way to a strained wet gurgle. Whatever his teeth were made of, they weren't bulletproof. I was just about to leave, but then I noticed - with a mounting sense of alarm that the corpse was still moving and I could still hear growling and clicking. Sure enough, the carcass was pushed to the side by another tunneler emerging from the hole in the ground.

"Oh, fuck off!" I yelled, firing a round right at the tunneler's face before it even had a chance to fully emerge from under the dead one. It went limp before it could look surprised, but it was still moving - because even more were trying to force their way through the corpses to the surface.

"I'm not sure..." I admitted, trying to think of the last thing Ulysses had said to me:

Walk West into the sun, and keep walking... until it dies. There I'll be waiting.

Maybe I was remembering it wrong. I tapped the side of my helmet. "ED-E, are you sure we're going the right way?"

"Affirmative," ED-E replied, zooming along the path, past a broken chain-link fence covered in signs. I slowed down as I got close, inspecting them. They were all variations on the same kind of warning: beyond is a military base, do not enter; trespassers will be shot, etc. They reminded me of the signs outside Boomer territory, or the signs outside of Hidden Valley.

"I've got a bad feeling about this..." Sue squeaked. I nodded in agreement, gripping my rifle tighter.

"Yeah. Me too." Beyond the fence was a whole bunch of concrete rubble... except for one structure. Sort of. At one point, it may have been a part of a much larger building, but all that was left was what amounted to a large concrete bunker. Each wall seemed to be three feet thick, at the very least; probably reinforced with steel rebar, if the rubble all around was any indication. There were tons of broken concrete walls all around, but the structure I was looking at was the only one that had anything that could pass for a roof. ED-E was hovering just outside it, waiting for me.

"This is... familiar," ED-E said, with audible difficulty. "A flag symbol left by Enemy_Courier is inside." I came to a stop, and looked at another piece of graffiti, scrawled in red paint above the door.

"How the sun dies?" I read aloud, turning the simple statement into a question. "What the fuck does that even mean?" It seemed like this was meaning behind Ulysses cryptic message from earlier. Except that this was just as cryptic, and he was nowhere to be found. I'll be waiting, my foot. But then, this kind of purple prose cryptic bullshit in the form of sentence fragments was what I'd come to expect from Ulysses. I shouldn't be surprised.

Cautiously, I stepped into the bunker, leading with the barrel of my rifle. Sure enough, it seemed to be empty. There was a large console beneath a wide viewport, and on the right side was a large door, complete with one of Ulysses' white flag markers painted in the middle. The door was a blast door: big, heavy, some kind of sturdy metal, and with faded, barely visible yellow and black hazard stripes running along the edges.

"I guess we are going the right way..." Sue said quietly. I walked over to the door, with ED-E floating right behind.

"Fuck. Maybe not," I said, reaching out and grabbing hold of the frayed and loose wires hanging from the broken control box next to the door. "There's no way this door is coming open with that fucking mess of broken wires and no way to fix it. That door looks way too thick to punch through, as well. No weak hinges. My arm would probably give before -"

"Friend_Courier," ED-E interrupted, grabbing my attention. "There appears to be another set of wires, leading to the door." He was hovering close to the corner, his speaker grille pointing down between the console and the wall. I peered into the crack, and sure enough there was a makeshift conduit that connected a small corner of the wrecked door control to the large console.

"You think this might open the door?" I asked, pulling away from the crack and patting the console; a small cloud of dust billowed out from under my hand.

"It is certainly possible, yes Friend_Courier." One giant console to open a door. Seems convoluted. But no more nuts than anything else I'd seen here in the divide. I scanned the console for any part of it that didn't appear to be covered in dust, and my eyes fell on a small red lever. So, I pulled it and... nothing. I toggled it back and forth, and the door remained resolutely shut.

"Maybe there's no power?" Sue offered up helpfully. That's when I noticed the dish-shaped receiver on the opposite end of the console: the same kind of dish that ED-E had been using to open things up since we came to The Divide.

"ED-E? Think you can -" He blasted the dish with a burst of light-blue electricity before I could finish. I shrugged and smiled, nodding at ED-E. "Thank you."

I reached out and pulled the switch.

The top of the console erupted in sparks, and I brought an arm up to cover my face just out of reflex. A loud klaxon started to go off from somewhere outside the bunker. I couldn't tell where, because the echo was bouncing off everything. A yellow light above the door that I hadn't noticed suddenly turned on, and began spinning around. Something was rumbling, causing the ground beneath my feet to tremble. The pit of my stomach began to fall out.

"Oh... oh no..." ED-E said, after floating over to look out of the viewport above the console with a staggering level of dread and unease. I leaned over the console to look out myself, and the bottom of my stomach proceeded to fall out like it was tied to an anvil. Below the bunker, I could see an enormous hatch in the flat concrete plain below slowly opening up... revealing the tip of a nuclear missile. The missile was being moved into launch position, and a great cloud of steam was billowing out all around the open hatch.

"FUCK!" I shouted, scrambling over the controls. "No, no, no! Where's the cancel!? There's got to be some kind of cancellation button!" I pushed every button and pulled every lever I could see in a vain attempt to get things to stop, but it was no use. The console had gone dead. I slammed my fists against it several times, hoping that some percussive maintenance might do the job, but no. It was dead.

The roar from the missile outside grew steadily louder and louder, until a huge cloud of smoke, steam, and fire erupted skyward from between the missile and the silo walls. The nuke rose steadily into the air, and I was hit with a blast of heat and dust when the rocket engines cleared the hatch. It was now on its way to wherever it was going, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I felt paralyzed by fear as the realization of what had just happened struck me. And not just what happened... but what I had done.

"Detecting irregularities in the Titan-II liquid fuel cell..." ED-E spoke up suddenly, grabbing my attention. "Friend_Courier, the seals are about to fail!" I looked out of the viewport to try and track the path of the missile; a trail of black smoke followed the bright glow of the engines, already far in the distance, and even I could tell how unsteady that path was.

I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed hold of ED-E, pulled him close to my chest and dove for cover under the console, curling around ED-E in as tight a ball as I could manage. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and braced. I was probably dead anyway, but I still took cover just the same. The sound of the rocket had faded into nothing. Several seconds passed.

There was a flash, brighter than anything I have ever experienced. My eyes were shut as tight as I could manage with my helmet-covered face buried against ED-E's chassis. And yet, the flash was so overwhelmingly bright that it was like someone was pointing a flashlight right against my eyes. Everything around me started to heat up like I'd been put in an oven. But there was no sound... at least at first.

Several seconds passed. Just as the light began to fade, and the heat seemed to get worse, the ground beneath me started to heave and roll. The solid concrete moved under me in waves. A roar louder and more all consuming than any explosion I'd ever experienced hit my ears like a pair of sledgehammers boxing my head. It felt like every part of my body was being punched simultaneously. I couldn't tell if I was being hit by the shock front of the explosion, or if pieces of the bunker I was huddled in were collapsing on top of my armored form.

I'm sure that I must have screamed, huddled in a ball, curled around ED-E, but I couldn't hear anything. There was no sound, just the violent earthquake shaking all around, and the heat threatening to cook me.

For several minutes, I didn't move. I wasn't sure if I was even alive. Cautiously, I opened my eyes, and I was still surrounded in darkness. I tried to move, and met tremendous resistance. I was buried in concrete rubble and metal. I grunted, shoving against the concrete surrounding me with every part of my body.

My hand pushed past the rubble, and out into the open air; I grasped frantically at nothing, trying to find something I could use to pull myself free. My Pip Boy's Geiger counter started clicking more frantically than I'd ever heard. My palm found grip on something, and I tried to ignore the fact that it felt like I was pressing my hand against a frying pan that had been on the stove for six hours.

Concrete rubble fell off my back after I pushed off the ground with immense difficulty. I felt weak, as if my legs had turned to jelly. I clutched at my head, and ED-E floated out into the open air away from me. I shook my head clear and looked around.

Apart from the ceiling, the bunker was surprisingly intact. The wall I'd taken cover behind had definitely taken the brunt of it. Exposed rebar wires poked out from where the concrete had crumbled, and every surface still facing the explosion was still slightly red and smoldering. The console looked like it had been ripped apart from the inside, with most of it completely disintegrated. Waves of heat radiated off everything still standing, and my Pip Boy's clicking just illustrated the point. Amazingly enough, the wall with the door, and the structure it was connected to, seemed to be completely intact even though the door had been forced open, and all the paint had evaporated into nothing.

I looked out across the distance, and the mind numbing horror of the situation hit me. The buildings and the mountains beyond seemed to be melting. The sky was no longer black, but orange, like even the air had caught fire. There were no clouds... except the one.

The mushroom cloud was so large, and yet so far distant, that it was messing with my sense of perspective. The head of the blackened and still billowing mushroom cloud was huge, and yet the stem of the mushroom was thin and wispy, like it was made out of string. I couldn't tell how far away it was. It must have been several miles away, at least... hell, they could probably see the mushroom cloud looming over everything all the way in Vegas...

What have I done?