The Thin Line) Buried II
In Vault 101 there were those who thrived under the Overseer's caring hand and then those who didn't. Unlike the Old World, however, Vault 101 vaunted a pragmatic approach to discrimination based on the contribution every individual citizen could bring to the community, at the best of his and her ability. The Vault nurtured and educated his children, generation after generation, but the relationship ought to be symbiotic.
For prosperity and security.
Hogarth saw the facts behind the PR bullshit while still young and naive: either you or your family had enough skill to be useful, or a tumble down the social ladder was behind the corner. After all, a community couldn't survive for centuries by relying on slackers and half-assed measures, right?
It was a pragmatic philosophy that Hogarth had found quite comfortable and suitable even as a child. Which later told him there was something definitely wrong with his brain, but like every good child he put the responsibility at his Father's feet: what other outcome was to be expected when the only figure of reference to his young and impressionable mind showed genuine interest in him only when Hogarth behaved beyond his years and tried to get involved in his father's work? Sure, he was young and a brat, mostly a hindrance, but at least at those times the Vault Doctor was still his father and not involved in a sordid affair with a bourbon bottle.
Maybe it appealed to him because he was kind of good at his tasks and homework, unlike most of thw bullies and the kids who treated him like shit because it was easy and safe to follow the self-elected alphas and the popular kids. After all, who wouldn't love to poke the kid with the weird name and the short temper until he lashed out and was taken down a peg? Hilarious.
Only years later, after Agent Gomez took him under his wing to teach him some 'mental discipline' and stuff when his tenth birthday party turned into a mess, Hogarth realized how broken that philosophy was. Or rather, the principle was good and sound. The applications, however, sucked.
Merit and hard work got you far in Vault 101, but only
so far. One only needed to take a look at the Overseer Election Reviews, available to anyone with a Pip-Boy and access to the public library, which was really everyone above the age of ten: for two hundred years, the Overseers always hailed from the Big Families. Mack, Armstrong, Almodovar, Hannon and Kendalls: the names were there for anyone to peruse.
The only exception had been the Overseer before Alphonse Almodovar, one Adam Leninger, but apparently both he and his family were among the many victims of the epidemic that claimed the lives of half the Vault's population some five years before Hogarth's birth. Jonas' parents had died then too and James had told Hogarth when he was still very little not to ask the man about it. Not to ask about it to anyone, really.
Mum apparently died of related causes to, a resistant chronic infection that quickly degenerated during her pregnancy. She too was taboo.
"Leave the dead to rest and the living to their grief."
Whatever. The waste burners of the time, those still alive anyway, must have had their hands full for quite a while. Or worked very fast.
If didn't end there, the hypocrisy of Vault 101
pragmatism. Funny enough, the more Mr. Brotch tried to follow the book and instill the values promoted by Almodovar into the young minds under his care, the more the cracks became evident. Maybe the GOAT and the whole concept of standardized attitudinal testing was really flawed, as his father sometimes rambled in the precocious phases of alcoholic stupor. Why have a jaded idealist try and teach the new generations the exact opposite otherwise?
Anyway, the Overseer's was an elected position and while the office lasted '
until unfit for duty or otherwise indisposed', there were instances where the almighty ruler had been removed ahead of his time. Again, the Big Families played the lion in the henhouse. And so it was that, to gather but above all maintain support it was the norm for a man of power to share the connected privileges of that power with his closer supporters.
It couldn't be anything too blatant, because the Vault still housed hundreds of people who had to believe the system they had been taught worked as a flawless machine, but if one looked just between the folds, it wasn't easy to miss the tampering here and the shoves there.
The comfier apartments, assigned to the Families for so long that when the talks for relocation piped up among the working class every once in a while, few dared to issue a challenge for the lofts in the Atrium. The better jobs too, though there the favoritism needed to be less pronounced and one had to work before he could receive the proverbial shove.
And so Paul Hannon Jr, firstborn of the Head of Security and Right Hand of the Overseer, wouldn't be aspiring for anything more than a Kevlar vest and a plexiglas visor to hide his missing teeth behind, but sure enough he would get an apartment of his own at the expenses of the still childless - and thus
useless - Holdens when Christine Kendall popped the first mewling abomination.
Stevie Mack, wounded in his dignity but still brutal and cunning and otherwise lacking in the brains department, 'suffered' a similar fate despite being the first spawn of that dynasty. Wally Mack instead, by being among the top of his - and Hogarth's - class and shrewd of mind, was comfortably seated in a plush deputy-overseer position at the Food & Sustainment Department.
Mostly seated, since he required a cane to move around his bad leg these days, but it wasn't unrealistic for him to aim at the highest chair once Almodovar passed. His family's support and his marriage to Amata surely gave him enough ilk to pursue his ambitions.
Hogarth was sixteen when he was told that he would never have a family. Not because he was less skilled or capable: half the Departments in the Vault had wanted him to extend his apprenticeship, and most of the others didn't because they licked ass so hard their tongue got periodically glued.
His exclusion was only due to his father, the Vault's only accomplished physician and all-around angsty genius, being in the Overseer's bad books.
Truth be told, at the time he didn't care over much about it: how could he when his crush and the girl he wanted to be with, Susie Mack, would reproduce with that pig Butch DeLoria, their union bestowed the highest and only seal of approval? What kind of name was Butch anyway? The match also clashed with his model of the Big Families and their power plays: what advantage would Butch, the talentless son of a drunkard from the Third Level, bring to the fold?
It didn't matter that Hogarth knew Susie was smitten with Butch since they were toddlers: the useless prick had even made an habit of taunting him from the moment he had known of Hogarth's affections. It didn't matter that James had a fondness for alcohol too, and they both lived on the Third Level as well: he was the doctor, he was useful. Butch's mom worked as a janitor in a Vault with automated cleaning systems.
All that mattered was that the Overseer's decision wasn't fair or coherent. Pragmatism and population growth charts suddenly took the back seat to a teenager's righteous indignation. It wasn't fair to him, and he wouldn't accept it.
And that, at the end of it all, was the first discriminant in Vault 101. Those who accepted the rules and made do even when it stung, they lead somehow comfortable lives. The idealists or those selfish enough to refute their allotted piece of the world... well, they sucked, and would forever suck. But they did stand up for what they believed was right and proper. That ought to count for
something that wasn't a shitty existence.
Usefulness still held a solid second position in the list and thinking back on it, Hogarth begrudgingly realized that Butch and Susie's match did indeed follow the system, in a perversely coherent way. It was the act of a future leader tying a useful follower to his cause with something more durable than flattery and condescension. GOAT or no GOAT, Hogarth wouldn't blink once if Butch was suddenly assigned to Security once and if Wally Mack rested his ass on the Overseer's plush chair or anywhere near -
nearer - to it.
At the time, Hogarth had taken great satisfaction in this realization, that for how bad things looked, they still followed that comprehensible layout. What was still lacking was the sense of compensation and rightful retribution of the wrongs he suffered. Sure, he
understood the system, but what good had it ever done to him?
James snorted when he heard his idea, but James was used to remain untouched due to his genius and everything that wrought and it was a behavior that had rubbed off on Hogarth more than he realized at the time. He was good, he had great potential, he was courted by half the Vault's departments without being born with his ass landed in the Atrium.
What could they do to him?
A whole lot of things, it turned out. But like every self-appointed revolutionary genius in the history of forever, Hogarth dug his grave and carved his tombstone with his own two hands. And damn if he wasn't proud of it.
But during those ten minutes on the podium addressing the rest of the Vault, he had been above all of them.
Above Almodovar, who rectified and red-lined the graduation theses belonging to over-achieving students for improper and subversive content after Mr. Broch selected the best and worthy.
Above Wally Mack with, his pedantic, calculated speech and his boisterous, shoulder-clapping father Allen Mack and his stupid baseball hat.
Above Butch DeLoria in the second row, the over-compensating prick, always on Mack's heels but never quite at his level.
And above his father too, with his utter disregard for the educational system and the disapproving, resentful look that grew more and more evident with each shared meal.
Almodovar's expression of surprise and affronted shock when Hogarth fished out the true thesis from his Vault Suit and discarded the load of sycophant bullshit he had delivered to ensure himself a place on the podium was simply priceless. The following ten minutes of picking apart the entire Vault system by the seams in carefully timed sentences were worth of Cicero's highest praise. At the end of it, in the hushed silence that followed, Hog felt like a modern Prometheus who had delivered the fire to mankind.
Butch
laughed. Because Butch always laughed and mocked when he was in over his head. Laughed and puffed his chest and swung his fists. Hogarth half-expected the reaction, if only to see his nemesis cover himself in ridicule in front of the entire Vault. In front of the entire
World.
Then Wally Mack laughed. Then Freddy Gomez and Paul Hannon Jr and Christine Kendall and Allen Mack and Agent Wolf and soon everyone was laughing or chuckling at his expense. Even
Susie laughed. The few that didn't - Jonas, Stanley, Herman Gomez - they looked at him with pity and sympathy from the sidelines, but it hardly mattered when hundreds of people, when the entire World was laughing at his expense.
Hogarth remembered Almodovar's condescending smirk as he encouraged an Amata close to tears onto the podium and thanked him for his' enlightening exposition'.
The following morning, Hogarth had walked to the classroom and the GOAT in a sleepless haze. His mind was unable to process what had just happened when really, in hindsight the reasons and motivations where there all along. He had explained them for the rest of the world to hear, and then he had been unable to accept when the social model he had carefully put together proved to be exactly spot on.
The Big Families, acceptance and refusal, privilege the hypocrisy of it all: what other reaction than ridicule could you expect when you stated the utter obvious with the attitude of one who'd just discovered the true meaning of life itself?
The day of the GOAT, his concept of invincibility-by-genius was given the last push when Mr. Brotch announced, not without a small amount of melancholic sympathy, that his test landed him in the Maintenance Department to repair busted robots, reprogram wonky Pip Boys and work on refitting the Vault for the rest of his life.
James wasn't happy.
Then the Tunnel Snakes had the brilliant idea to organize him a graduation celebration in the cafeteria, complete with gifts. The rest, as they say, was history.
0 * TTL * 0
In the past two years or so, Hogarth had grown to appreciate some aspects of his work at MaintDep. For one, what he did was actually
useful and the part of Hogarth who still kind of respected James for his work despite the man's attitude latched onto that consolation.
That the fruits of his works were reaped by the people who first mocked him and then treated him like some sort of leprous didn't sit well with him, but then again that would remain a constant everywhere else in Vault 101 with things as they were. Contrary to say, being an hairdresser, MaintDep had other added bonuses.
His co-workers weren't one, needless to say. The best treated him with dismissive professionalism: the rest ranged from indifference to active undermining and emotional punching-ballism. Then again, that sort of behavior had been institutionalized as the new blue two years before, so people like Floyd stood out from the crowd only because work forced him to interact more with the guy.
And interaction was the mother of opportunity.
Beside them and the obnoxious British Mr. Handys with their witty, irking personality matrixes - which Hogarth swore he would one day pick apart and turn into toasters - the rest wasn't so bad. The skills he developed became quite useful from day one to restore his new loft in the bowels of the Vault to at least a livable condition. It also gave him access to the old, empty levels during the maintenance runs, and that place was an endless treasure trove for someone who was supposed to subsist largely on the charity of others, or lack thereof.
Morevoer his boss, Stanley, had developed the habit to pair up with him on those runs. Whether out of sincere sympathy or simple need because nobody else would accept to, Hogarth didn't know, but Stanley Armstrong was quite the oddball in Vault 101, a kindred spirit of sort, so Hogarth was content with deluding himself of the former. The pariah and the oddball had quite a nice tune to his ears, but what would he know after almost twenty years of jazz and soft ambient music on a daily basis?
Today was one such days when he raided the old levels with Stanley. It had been some time since they'd come this deep too. Floyd had even brightened his day by bumping his head into one of the consoles.
Sadly, it was also apprenticeship month for the twelve-years-old.
"All the doors on this level are sealed mechanically by the Overseer's decree," Stanley was explaining as Hogarth went through the lengthy procedure of unsealing. Stopping himself from snorting here and there was requiring quite a bit of focus. "Every time we have to access one, we have to file a request through our deputy overseer for approval. Based on the level and on the index of threat, sometimes an Agent comes with the MaintDep team to look out for Radroach nests."
'
Unless you ignore the door and go for the maintenance tunnels in the pavement, kids. A fair piece of advice: think twice before crawling for three floors in the middle of the night, dragging a punching bag chained to your ankle.'
Monica Kendall and Francis Gorobitz were the twin images of bored, pre-pubertal attention, but Monica was also one of Stanley's many granddaughters and so she piped up in a pointless, dutiful question. "Why this room, granddaddy?"
"Spare parts, mostly," Stanley said, turning to look at the screen of his Pip-Boy. "The eggheads at the Reactor Level busted half the lights in their offices, support and all. Now they are down to Pip-Boys." Hogarth could almost feel the enthusiasm perspiring from the kids and the prospect of unscrewing lamps from the ceiling.
'
If only they knew.'
"Large ones like those aren't common and this time there was no jury-rigging a repair, so we need replacement parts. This was an administration office, so hopefully... hey Hog?"
"Mmh what?"
"Check your radar." The older man glanced meaningfully at the children. "Mine is picking up something. You think it's Floyd and Alberts on their own run?"
Hogarth stopped, fingers away from the next switch in the circuit case. Floyd and Alberts where on life support duty today, they both knew
that fully well. Wordlessly, he booted up his Pip-Boy from energy saving mode and brought up the radar application.
They also both knew of the custom-and-not-necessarily-legal modifications Hogarth had applied to his Pip-Boy. Stanley had been a big hand in making some of them workable options, what with far more years of expertise in electronics, and one of those was a more accurate and wider-range radar than the standard fare, complete with a rudimental biometric-signature reader.
It was mightily useful in avoiding undesirables like James and the Snakes, when he remembered to listen to the warning ping. It also helped quite a lot in going undetected during his nightly supply runs in an out of the older levels.
'What... what the hell are those?'
"Stan, take the kids upstairs. Fast!" Whatever the signals belonged to, they were
bigger than radroaches. Bigger, faster and approaching from a sector that should be sealed off for all purposes and intents. "Send a distress call to Security too." His connection to the emergency system had been rescinded two years before among other things, and Hogarth hadn't seen the necessity to piggy-back on someone else's connection so far.
"My brother says we must not listen to Sooty," Gorobitz squeaked back, addressing Stanley and pointedly avoiding Hogarth's glare. "That Sooty is stupid and will get us in trouble if we listen to him."
"Shut up and move," Hogarth shot back. He picked up his toolbox and glanced down at his Pip-Boy. Sixty meters away. He shoved Gorobitz in the other direction not too gently and kept doing so when the boy protests outgrew words and he ground his feet. His shouts bounced off the walls as if he was being drawn and quartered on the spot.
'
Whatever chance we had of going unnoticed has puffed. Fan-fucking-tastic.'
The corridor they were in had had partial illumination restored for the duration of their stay. The overhead lights were low and suffuse, casting their shadows in multiple directions like formless, oblong fingers grabbing at the bare, stained walls. For a few moments, the only sounds attacking the decade-long silence were those of boots hitting the metal panels and Gorobitz's protests as Hogarth gave up on the shoving and threw him over his shoulder.
Then he heard
them, whatever they were. The clicking of sharp legs on metal and the chattering of flickering mandibles was deafening in the narrow confines of the corridor, many times more so that the chirping similar sounds belonging to Radroaches. Hogarth didn't turn around, but he knew the creatures were bigger and were approaching faster than they could run. He saw the same realization on Stanley's pale, lightly lined face as he picked Monica up and broke into a full sprint despite his age and playful heart.
The stairs were up ahead, not a dozen meters away. It didn't matter much though: Security rarely patrolled lower that the Fourth Level and in occasion of the scavenging run, security protocols required the access doors to the Sixth Level from below to be closed. The technicians had the codes, but it would take time for the unsealing. They'd never make it before the creatures caught up to them, not with two children and an old man in the fold.
'Why? This area should be clean of critters.'
Hogarth didn't know why he did what he did next. Gorobitz's brother was probably right and he was a stupid, stupid moron with lingering delusions of grandeur and revolution. By the time
that reasonable theory crossed his mind, it was too late to turn back. Damn pride.
He unceremoniously dropped the no-longer kicking Gorobitz and shoved him towards the stairs. "Stan, run!"
Stanley probably insulted him back, cursing at his blockheadedness, but Hogarth had already turned towards the big critters chasing after them, and whatever the old man said washed over him. A girl screamed, or maybe it was a girlish scream from a boy. Whoever, Hogarth couldn't blame them.
He felt like screaming along.
Ants. Big, twisted lovechildren between a lovercraftian horror and Mackay's wet dream on wildlife and radiation. Matted carapaces of dirty chitin advanced on long, elbowed legs, hooked claws ticking and screeching against the metal paneling, Black eyes shone maliciously at the human.
Hogarth goggled at the twin jagged jaws protruding from each of those heads and clicking, clicking faster and faster with every passing second and every meter covered between them and the prey.
Him. Some dripped a blotchy, dark liquid that Hogarth's mind refused to believe was what it was.
There weren't too many of them, his mind offered. And most of the 'not too many' were maybe as long as his arm and maybe half as wide, but the jaws were still as long as his index. Plenty of teeth to shred his ankles or crunch his neck like a straw.
So it was with dawning that Hogarth's eyes fixed on the one at the back. The big one, Bigger. His mind failed him.
'
This is it. I'm going to die.'
He didn't get any answer to that. The critters swarmed towards him and someone screamed. Definitely girlish, but it wasn't him. Screaming wasted breath: in a fight, your breath was your lifeline.
Hogarth brought the toolbox down in an arc onto the first bug and the jawed head splattered with a crack and a squelch. Ant brains and ichor splattered on his pant legs and nausea assaulted him like a wave. He kicked the next and the makeshift metal club arched sideways. Exoskeleton shattered and muscle strained as another critter turned into a smear of mucus on the wall.
White-hot pain shot up his leg as an ant tore into his calf. Stars danced in his vision then died as teeth tore at muscle and bone. He staggered, but mad certainty that falling translated into 'gruesomely buying the farm' kept him standing and sent his leg lashing out towards the wall. Another flash of pain, then relief as the jaws slacked and the broken halves of the bug rolled on the floor.
Hogarth wobbled backwards against the wall, head swimming, darkness squeezing out his vision. He swung out and his arm shuddered on impact. The toolbox flew out of his hand, clattering away, and shaking fingers searched for the tool belt. Daily routine was the only thing that allowed him to find his targets on the first try. The bugs wouldn't have allowed for a retry.
The screwdriver in his left found purchase into a chitin skull, right through one eye and out of the back. The resistance was comically lacking and Hogarth experienced the sudden urge to laugh.
The stimpak's needle found the top of his shredded calf instead, clotting stimulants and nutrients shooting into the torn tissue. The syringe emptied, but the needle snapped inside. He didn't have the breath to curse, he barely had any to keep going. The ants kept coming.
He pulled back the screwdriver, then jabbed it forward. A sudden weight pulled his left down as he limped back along the wall. Hogarth's eyes widened under a mess of sweaty, sticky brown hair: there was an ant
dangling from his Pip-Boy, jaws working fruitlessly into the hard-ceramic cover. The bugs could
jump!
He smashed ant and Pip-Boy into the wall, flinching as assorted ant muck splashed onto his face, mouth and nose. Hogarth spluttered in reflex, only getting more of the stuff on his tongue, but gagging reflex was overruled by survival instinct kicking in overdrive as another jumped at him, aiming for his throat.
Hogarth staggered back and brought up his left: once more, searching jaws only found hard ceramics and chitin met metal walls, but the rapid,
heavy skittering of claws on the pavement drove any thought of triumph away. The cow-sized bug charged at him over its dead kin, a mass of vicious appendages and vengeful bug honor.
This time, the mind-voice agreed.
Hogarth ran.
A leg only half functional, he actually limped away. He dragged the limb along, too terrified and morbidly fascinated to turn tail completely and stop staring. Bullies he could deal with. Vengeful guards redeeming a slight to the family? Easy-peasy. Even the small critters were doable.
That rolling bulldozer of animal hate? For Christ's sake, he only had a screwdriver. What should he do, jump on its back and break its fucking
neck?
Again, the choice was taken from him. The stairs came up as unexpected as they always did to anyone running backwards in a near panic. Taken as he was with the bug, he didn't notice he had passed under the open door until the first step dug into his ankles and momentum pulled him on his back, the other steps biting into his spine.
The screwdriver flew from his grasp and his breath went with it. Then the ant was upon him, squeezing past the door to end the chase.
Unlike what he expected, it wasn't the jaws who got him first. It was the forelegs and the hooked claws at their end that raked him over. Panic and adrenaline brought sudden clarity to Hogarth's swimming vision and out of reflex his left hand, encased in the Pip-Boy glove, lashed out to stop the coming blow as if it was a punch.
Somehow it did and the reinforced screen cracked against the tip on the attacking extremity. The force behind it jostled Hogarth and he rolled with it as if he was dodging a dropping kick from Gomez. The second claw bit into his back rather than his face and this time Hogarth screamed as blood flowed and flesh ripped, the sound echoing up the stairwell.
Then he was past it, no longer between the bug's jaws and legs but propped against the wall and the steps, his back throbbing and spewing blood that stained the rusted metal. The bug tried and round back on him to finish the job, to
eat him, but it had four other legs to control and a huge bulk to move around in the small doorway. It pushed and screeched as it tried to work the rest of its body past the entrance, flailing its head in confusion and frustration and snapping its jaws at Hogarth, not quite able to reach him.
Maybe it was the blood loss going to his head. Maybe it was desperation or delusion or too many a Grognak comic. Maybe he didn't want to become ant shit, to the joy of the Vault. Hogarth didn't stop to ponder. He gathered his body under him, bit down on the pain and
jumped.
He landed on the ant's thorax with a grunt as one of the legs was caught under his weight and snapped, tearing his jumpsuit open; one of the broken halves progressed further, biting across his ribs and leaving behind a long, crimson line and eliciting a curse from Hogarth.
The giant ant screeched and thrashed, its body collapsing onto the missing limb under the additional weight. Hogarth's feet hit the ground again and he pushed himself up once more. His vision throbbed with the pain lancing up his leg and back. He could feel his hands slipping from the chitin and himself out of consciousness.
He swung his sane leg over the ant's carapace, then he bent forward and grabbed the two elbowing antennas protruding from the thrashing head. In his addled state he imagined the thing's multiple eyes rolling back to settle on him as he planted both feet deep into the back of its head and pulled.
The ant screeched and Hogarth grunted, then hissed and finally joined the beast in a scream that was pain incarnated. From his back, where muscles were tearing and blood gushing out; from his leg, where the wound had never closed and now the stimpak provided only the euphoria keeping him going; from his right hand, crushing down and bleeding on apocalypse-hardened chitin that cracked, slinters wedging into his palms.
For long moments, man and ant struggled for dominance in a battle of endurance and stubbornness. Then chitin broke under an iron vice and the giant ant buckled, sending Hogarth crashing against its back and then rocking forward again like a crazed yo-yo riding a wild bull. His head felt like an axe split it in two when the ant screeched again and then buckled on its missing and stuck legs again, claws raking and slipping over the bloody, smooth floor.
Momentum carried him forward. Before Hogarth realized what he was doing, his battered body registered
what he was holding in both hands and towards what he was being carried by the merciless laws of physics.
The broken antennas carved into the ant's two major eyes like a hot knife through Cram and continued forward, past the exploding liquid orbs and straight into the bug's brain. Hogarth coughed violently as the ant twitched one last time, and then crumpled on the ground, where it remained still.
Hogarth was barely conscious when the echo of steps boomed down the flights of stairs. The Security Team, guns out and fingers twitching, found him straddling the carcass of an ant the size of a cow, mumbling nonsense in his delirium. The last thing he managed to focus on was the flashlights underneath pistol muzzles, then even those winked out and Hogarth slipped into peaceful nothingness.
