Is someone using this as a well?
The thought gave me a strange shiver.
That ... thing, whatever it is ... surely it isn’t bringing up water in a pail?
I climbed off the ladder onto the concrete floor and peered down the hall. There was a plain metal door at the far end.
I made my way cautiously to the door and pressed my ear to it. There was no sound coming from the other side.
I tested the handle and opened the door a few inches with a rusty creak.
8
I looked through the gap between the door and the frame into another hall. The walls were made of brick, the concrete on the floor old and cracked, and there was a warm yellow light illuminating everything. I could smell wood smoke. The light was flickering.
I slipped through the door into the hall to take a better look. Further down the hall was an open doorway. The light was coming from the door.
I crept as quietly as I could down the hall until I got to the door. Cautiously, I peeked around the edge of the door frame into a utility room not much bigger than a walk-in closet. The room had been converted into a squatter’s den. There was a filthy mattress and blankets against the far wall, a small wooden desk with a chair in the corner beside the door, and a number of piles of books. In the center of the floor was a fire pit ringed by broken cinder blocks, and it was the light from this fire that served as the sole source of illumination.
I felt like Alice in Wonderland.
How can someone be living here? So far underground and away from everything? Beside an all-but-undocumented abandoned military installation?
I stepped into the room to take a closer look. I noticed an unusual tidiness about the room. The floor wasn’t covered with empty bottles, food wrappers, or used syringes, and it didn’t smell like urine or other — worse — bodily fluids. And the books were stacked relatively neatly and didn’t appear to be arbitrary. There were too many books about poetry, history, and philosophy. There was also a collection of long sticks leaning in the corner with rags tied around the ends, and beside the sticks, a container of gasoline.
Torches.
There was a notebook on the desk and an old coffee mug being used to hold pens, and, strangest of all, an unopened bag of potato chips.
A homeless person lives here, I thought. Not a monstrous ape-man, just a normal human being. And probably a harmless one, if they like reading poetry.
I looked around for something to wear, but there was nothing. I considered wrapping myself in the blanket, but I wasn’t sure what might be crawling on it so I decided against it. I pulled out the chair — an old wooden one with a leather seat and wheels — and sat down. I would just wait for the owner to return — it couldn’t be long if they’d left the fire burning — and they could help me find my way back to civilization.
I’d hardly eaten all day, and my stomach was grumbling.
I checked the expiry date on the chips and saw with no little surprise and some amusement that it hadn’t yet passed.
Sorry homeless person, I’m stealing your chips.
I tore open the bag and inhaled deeply. They smelled like heaven. Junk food heaven.
I began stuffing chips into my mouth and flipped open the notebook somewhat at random. It appeared to be a journal of sorts, with a number of dated entries, but there were also a good number of poems scattered throughout. I skimmed through a few verses, but I was no judge of poetry.
I came to a sketch and a potato chip dropped from my suddenly lifeless fingers.
It was the beast-man.
The likeness was uncanny. The same dead eyes, the same flat nose and broad bony cheeks and square chin and heavy brow, the same smooth, almost-hairless skin.
Written beneath in frantic letters were the words:
I saw the devil today.
I felt a chill run down my spine.
It tried to catch me, but I ran. I don’t know if I really saw it, or if I imagined it. Am I going insane?
More sketches followed, more frantic journal entries. The writer — I could tell by the writing it was a woman — described a number of close calls, talked about how she’d tried to escape, but that every time she’d tried to get to the surface, the monster had been waiting for her, blocking the passage.
Then this:
I think it’s trying to ... oh God! ... It’s trying to mate with me!
I felt a sick knot of dread in the pit of my stomach. I flipped the page. The date was two days later.
It caught me! I thought it was going to kill me. It held me down and it ... it mounted me. Like an animal.
And ... I let it! Oh God, I let it!
I pushed the book away in horror and shoved the chair away from the desk.
I have to get out of here. Who knows what happened to that poor woman? If it finds me here...
I didn’t even want to think about it.
I grabbed one of the torches and doused the rag-wrapped end with gasoline from the canister; then I stuffed the end into the heart of the campfire.
It burst into flame.
Let’s see how much you like a face full of fire, you big gray ape, I thought with something bordering on manic glee. The horror of my situation was slowly driving me mad.
I poked my head out of the room, waving the torch defensively in front of me. I swept it from side to side, examining both directions. The hall to my right appeared to have collapsed in a pile of bricks and concrete. It looked like I didn’t have any choice.
I slipped out of the room and began walking down the hall toward the left. I passed the door to the service tunnel that led to the water basin, wondering what the author of the journal would think about seeing the light on. How long had it been since there’d been any electricity flowing through those wires? Did she even know about the abandoned government facility?
The hall sloped up gradually. There were pipes and electrical cables lining the walls, and things that looked like old-fashioned fuse boxes. Everything looked old and neglected. Many of the cables appeared to be frayed, perhaps chewed on by rats.
I wriggled my toes nervously. The thought of a rat running over my bare feet made me shiver. Wandering around in underground passages in my underwear wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Hopefully the torch would keep the creepy crawlies away.
In a few minutes, I came to a fork in the tunnel. The hall turned at an abrupt angle to the right, but a narrower passage continued on in the direction I was already heading. There was an unpleasant odor emanating from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell from which passage it was coming. I must have been close to the sewers.
I heard a grunt and my breath hitched in my throat. Something was moving in the narrower passage ahead of me.
9
The shape made a snorting, huffing sound and began shambling toward me, using its arms as an extra set of legs, like an ape.
Without another moment of hesitation, I began running down the wide corridor that led off to the right. I heard a growl and the sound of heavy feet slapping quickly against the pavement. I looked back over my shoulder, my heart hammering in my chest. The creature — whatever it was — was moving fast!
The hall opened abruptly onto another wide tunnel. I had too much momentum to slow down, and the next thing I knew I was falling with a splash into fetid sewer water. My feet landed on the slimy bricks on the bottom and I slipped forward, up to my neck. Somehow, I managed to keep my balance without plunging the torch into the water. When I straightened up, I found that the water only came up to my waist. The smell was horrendous. I began gagging and tried to cover my nose but my hand was already coated in toilet water. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the beast-man rapidly approaching.
I waded as quickly as I could upstream, trying to will my legs to move faster through the sickening sludge. I heard a howl of outrage behind me and turned back to see the creature poised at the edge of the stream. It was beating its chest with its knuckles like a gorilla, roaring at me.
I
forced myself to move faster. There was a ledge running alongside the water, but I was afraid to leave the stream. The beast-man would surely follow me along the edge, but for now the water seemed to be holding it at bay.
I heard more scrambling behind me and looked back over my shoulder. The creature had discovered the ledge and was scurrying rapidly along it, though not quite at full speed. It appeared to be afraid of the water and kept looking at it suspiciously.
There was a splash in the water ahead of me and I turned and looked, startled. The water was rippling, but there was nothing else to see. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if part of the ceiling had collapsed, but I couldn’t see anything unusual and I didn’t have time to investigate.
A rat, most likely.
I shivered and pushed on, turning down a side passage. The creature would have to leap over the water to follow me now. I began to feel a small glimmer of hope that I might escape.
Something hard and cold brushed against my leg under the water. I leapt back instinctively, splashing sewage. The torchlight couldn’t penetrate the murky water more than a few inches, but I thought I saw something large and white moving rapidly past.
“Jesus Christ!” I said, backing away, the ape-man momentarily forgotten.
What the hell was that?!
I heard a loud series of harsh cries and shouts coming from behind me. The beast-man had almost caught up to me and was shaking its arms and tossing its head, baring its large, white teeth.
I heard another loud splash of water ahead of me and turned. I found myself staring into a wide, gaping maw.
10
A whitish pink tongue the length of my arm, surrounded by rows of long, glistening teeth the size of hunting knives and dripping slime swept toward me. It was an enormous albino alligator!
Without thinking, I swept the torch directly at it.
The creature shied away, clamping its jaws shut with a sickening snap. The leviathan turned, muddy water pouring from its glistening scaly, pearly-white hide. It must have been close to twenty feet long. The alligator’s protruding pink eyes locked onto mine and it prepared for a second lunge.
I shouted in terror, wildly swinging the torch as I backed away. The monster was not easily deterred. It surged forward, a ton of bone and muscle, its jaws stretched wide. I threw myself backward at the last possible second and the jaws clacked shut in the air just inches from my face. A half second slower and it would have bitten my head clean off!
I tried to wade toward the ledge and the alligator splashed forward again with unbelievable speed. I knew in that moment there would be no escaping it.
A large dark shape cannonballed between us with an enormous splash. The shockwave pushed me further back down the sewer. I scrambled for a toehold and my free hand slapped against the ledge. I clung to it and once again managed to keep the torch above water.
I watched in stunned awe as the alligator lunged at the beast-man. The man ape grabbed the alligator’s jaws with its bare hands, grabbing the bottom jaw with one hand, and the top with the other, forcibly holding them apart. The reptile’s frantic hissing blended with the beast-man’s primate roars and the splashing of sewer water in a terrifying, prehistoric din. The prodigious muscles of the ape-man’s back, shoulders, and arms strained as the alligator tossed its head from side to side, trying to shake itself loose.
With an ear-splitting shout of fury, the beast-man gave the alligator’s jaws a titanic wrench and there was a nauseating crunch of bone, tendon, and muscle tearing.
The alligator’s tail writhed spasmodically in the water for several seconds, spraying sewage everywhere, and then it, too, finally ceased to move. There was a moment of absolute silence and stillness and then the beast-man dropped the alligator’s lifeless corpse into the water.
The beast-man turned and looked at me with its milky, corpse-like eyes.
“Stay away from me!” I shouted, brandishing the torch.
With surprising dexterity, the creature snatched the torch from my hand and dunked it into the water.
The fire went out with a hiss and I was instantly plunged into darkness. A large, powerful hand closed around my wrist, gripping me like vise, and I felt a dizzying upsurge of terror beyond anything I had ever experienced.
So this is what it’s like to die of fear, I thought with strange detachment. And then I knew no more.
11
Ice cold water splashed my face.
I sat up with a start, sputtering. I could see again. The beast-man was standing hunched over me, its enormous hands dripping.
I scurried backward across the concrete with a squeal, scraping myself in a half-dozen places, my heart pounding in my chest.
I stared up at the monstrous figure from a half-dozen paces away. It stared back down at me.
I hadn’t realized how big the creature was. It would have been close to eight feet tall standing fully erect, and its shoulders were superhumanly broad. The lean corded muscles were beyond human. I could see the muscle fiber rippling under the smooth, gray skin, which was glistening with moisture as if it had just stepped out of a shower. The ape-man wasn’t entirely hairless, but its hairs, largely on its chest, belly, and forearms, were short and dark and blended into its dark gray skin. I tried very hard not to look at the shape dangling between its legs.
The creature grunted at me in a low voice.
“Stay back!” I shouted, retreating further.
The ape-man’s features were remarkably reminiscent of some kind of Neanderthal, almost a caricature of a human, but there was something sterner and more angular about it, something in its wide powerful jaws, its thin lips, its small nose, and its beetling brow that spoke of a carnivorous bent. Its ears were somewhat pointed, like a bat’s, and its snout twitched as it turned and tilted its head, tasting the air. It was inhuman — it had to be — and even monstrous, but now that I had a good close look at it, I wouldn’t have called it ugly precisely; no more than I would have called a panther or a greyhound ugly.
The beast looked directly at me, blinking its milky eyes. It raised one of its hands and gestured toward the steady torrent of sparkling water that was flowing out of a broad concrete tube in the wall overhead. It opened its mouth, as if it were speaking, but I realized that I couldn’t hear what it was saying over the cascading water.
It must have splashed me with the water from the spout. That’s what woke me up.
But why would it do that?
Something lying on the floor behind the ape-man caught my attention. It looked like clothing. Like ... a bra. And panties.
I looked down, gasping.
I was naked!
I threw my arm over my chest, covering my breasts, and closed my thighs together, turning partly away from the beast.
Instinctively, I tried to sense any feeling of having been physically violated, but aside from fatigue and muscle cramps and a chill, I felt intact.
“W-what d-do you w-want?” I said, teeth chattering.
The beast cocked an ear at me and made a face and then pointed at the water again. I stared at it, bewildered.
It snorted, making a sound that reminded me a great deal of a gorilla, and then walked over and stepped under the water and began running its hands over its body, washing itself. Every couple of seconds it paused and looked at me, made a rough sound like it was clearing its throat, and then resumed its pantomime. After half a minute of this, it stepped back out from under the stream and motioned for me to take its place.
I looked around. We were in some kind of deep pit made of perfectly smooth concrete walls, resting on a ledge that ran around the outside of a rectangular water basin. There were three concrete spouts draining into the pit, and high above, perhaps fifty feet overhead, was an opening sealed with a steel grate. The pearly white light of an overcast day shone through the grill.
“Help! Help me!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
My voice echoed off the walls. I waited for a few seconds and shouted again,
but there was still no response. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. No one would be able to hear me over the water. Assuming there was even anyone up there within earshot. For all I knew, we were on the outskirts of the city.
I shouted again, several times, and the beast-man shrugged its shoulders and shook its head, as if it thought I was crazy.
Finally, I stopped. I was covered in filth and slime, aside from the little bit that he’d washed off by splashing me. I didn’t particularly want to catch any kind of disease, so I reluctantly considered the possibility of showering.
The beast-man was waving me forward again and even took a couple of steps back, as if to say that it meant me no harm.
Cautiously, I got to my feet and slowly crept forward, keeping my hands over my breasts and loins. In a few steps, I was standing at the edge of the splashing water.
The beast-man took another step back and nodded its head encouragingly.
I stood under the water, gasping out loud at the coldness and shivering from head to toe. I rapidly scraped away all the muck with my hands, scrubbing myself as best I could, and then rinsed all the slime from my hair. Soap and shampoo would have been nice, but the water itself was remarkably clean. It must have been rain water. I realized how parched I was and cupped my hands together and drank some of the water. I knew it probably wasn’t the most sanitary thing to do, but I wasn’t sure when I’d get another chance. Or if I’d even get another chance. Would this be the last time I ever got to drink water?
When I was satisfied, I stepped back out from under the spout, moving away from the beast.
The gray man shifted impatiently from one foot to the other and waved me to come closer, nodding its head.
I took another step back, looking for some way to escape. The only exit was behind the creature.
The beast-man grunted and waved again.
Tamed by the Vault Dwellers Page 4