Tamed by the Vault Dwellers

by Clea Kinderton

  “Give me the keys,” she said in a voice loud enough for me to hear.

  “What? No!” said the doctor, dismayed.

  “I’m not going to talk to her through the window,” said the woman named Judy. “Let me in and I’ll talk to her.”

  The doctor chewed his lip, making his beard bristle.

  “I’ll let you in, but I’m not letting either of you out until she listens to reason,” he said adamantly.

  “Fine. She’ll listen,” said Judy.

  Judy marched toward the back of the lab, grabbed a lab jacket hanging from a hook on the wall, and disappeared through the door. The doctor cast a nervous look at me and then followed, grabbing a lab coat as well. I rushed over to the double doors and a moment later I heard the key in the lock. The door opened and Judy appeared, her hand held out, pushing me back. The doctor was behind her.

  “You can’t do this!” I shouted at them.

  “Calm down!” Judy said in a firm voice.

  The doctor slammed the door behind Judy and locked it.

  “No, I will not calm down!” I said, growling. “You can’t lock me up in here with these ... these animals.”

  Judy drew herself up indignantly, her eyes flashing.

  “They aren’t animals,” she said in a withering voice.

  I felt a pang of guilt and suddenly all the anger drained out of me. I knew as well as she did that they weren’t animals. I wasn’t being fair to the Moles. I felt weak and lightheaded and wanted to collapse.

  “Put this on,” said Judy in a gentler voice, holding out the lab coat.

  I slipped my arms through the sleeves and pulled it over my breasts. Judy took a handkerchief from her pocket and held it out to me so that I could wipe the spunk from my face.

  When I was finished cleaning myself up, Judy took me by the arm, supporting me as she led me toward the back of the room. The Moles were sitting and laying together as a group on a pile of mattresses that overlapped one another in a sort of mound in the far corner. They watched us indifferently, yawning and scratching themselves.

  The pregnant woman drew me over to a cage with blankets thrown over it.

  I froze in my tracks, half afraid she was going to try to push me inside.

  “I want to show you something,” Judy said, her face drawn and serious.

  She crouched and flipped aside the blanket hanging over the door of the cage. There was an odd, high-pitched squeal, and then Judy disappeared inside. A moment later, she came back out, something small and gray and human-like clinging to her like a monkey, its long arms around her neck, its legs wrapped around her side and belly. It was wearing a diaper and she was supporting it with one arm and gently shaking it.

  “This is my son,” she said, her face proud and defiant.

  I stared at the pair of them, completely dumbfounded.

  “They’re not animals,” she repeated. “They’re human beings, just like us. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to reproduce. And as you can see,” she pointed first to the infant Mole clinging to her, and then to her own belly, “we’re more than capable of having children.”

  I looked over at the other Moles, who were lounging like lions on the savanna after a kill. They were all males. The other ones that had tried to steal me from my companion had all been males, too. Where were the females?

  Judy intuited my question with uncanny percipience.

  “There aren’t any females,” she said. “Not here, in the vault. Dr. Hobart thinks they’re hiding in the cave system below the vault. There hasn’t been a single female birth since he and Rosie started the experiments. But we keep hoping,” she said, resting her hand on her belly. “Until you showed up, I was the only woman here. There was another woman before me, Angela, but she returned to the surface. Before that there was the doctor’s wife, Rosie, but she passed away a few years ago.”

  “You’re the one who wrote the diary!” I said in a sudden flash of insight.

  Judy gave me a quizzical look and then she had a minor revelation of her own.

  “You’re the one who ate my potato chips!” she exclaimed, laughing. “How much of the journal did you read?”

  “Part of it. I got to the part where you had your first ... encounter.”

  “You never finished it, though, did you? I wrote that entry three years ago. That’s how I got this little guy,” she said, bouncing the baby on her hip.

  “But who are you? What are you doing here?” I said. It seemed like the more time I spent here, the more the questions I had.

  The child made a whining sound and groped at Judy’s breast.

  “Let’s sit down,” she said. “He’s hungry.”

  Judy led me over to the pile of mats. One of the Moles half rose and reached for Judy but she pushed him away and made a spot for herself and sat down.

  I stood at the edge of the pile, eying the Moles suspiciously.

  “They won’t hurt you,” she said. “You’re part of the group now. They can be handsy, but they don’t mean any harm. If you’re not in the mood, just push them away.”

  I nodded vaguely, not sure I was understanding her. It was all so surreal. I looked over at the large naked gray men who lay sprawled out, completely indifferent to modesty, and timidly approached Judy, crouching down at her side. The infant was already suckling contentedly at her breast.

  One of the Moles rolled over and reached for me, his large hand slipping inside the lab coat and closing around my breast. He was partially erect.

  I stared at Judy, embarrassed.

  “Just push him away,” she said, motioning with her hand.

  Obediently, I grabbed the Mole’s wrist and pulled his hand out from under the lab coat and shoved his arm. He withdrew it without protest and rolled back over onto his side.

  Judy smiled. “See? You’ll get used to it. They’re always interested, but they’ll leave you alone if you make it clear you’re not interested.”

  I held my head in my hands.

  “This is all too weird,” I said. “Yesterday — was it yesterday? I don’t even know anymore — yesterday, or the day before, I was living a perfectly ordinary life, exploring old tunnels, and now I’m ... I’m living with a race of primitive men in an abandoned bomb shelter. And possibly pregnant.”

  Judy nodded sympathetically. “It takes some getting used to.”

  “But how did you end up here? Who are you?” I said, remembering she still hadn’t answered my questions.

  “I lost my job a few years ago,” said Judy. “Then I had a fight with my boyfriend and he kicked me out. I don’t have any family, so I ended up on the street. I came down to the tunnels to find some place to hide from the cold. And the other homeless people. I figured I would just write poetry, find myself. It seemed very romantic at the time. And then when I was ready, I’d go back. But now I don’t have to. I have a home here, now. Family.” She smiled sheepishly. “And if I’m going to be perfectly honest ... the sex is amazing.”

  I blushed, embarrassed for both of us.

  “You still...? With all of them...?” I let my questions trail off.

  Judy nodded, still smiling. “All the time. Like I said, they’re always up for it. I’ve got sex on tap.”

  “Don’t they get jealous?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes. But they take it out on each other. Honestly, I feel safer around them than I ever did around human men. The Moles are wild, and they can be violent, but they don’t play mind games. You always know where you stand with them. They don’t try to deceive you or manipulate you or take advantage of you. And they’re never aggressive toward me or the little one. Not violently, anyway, though they’re not shy about asking for sex. I wouldn’t trade this life for my old one for anything.”

  “But don’t you miss it? Being on the surface? Music, television, going to the movies, having friends?”

  Judy looked at me wistfully. “My life is down here, now. These are my friends.” She indicated the Moles with a nod. “And Alb
ert — Dr. Hobart. I even convinced him to put in a tv. I go topside every few weeks just to remind myself what I’m missing, but I don’t feel like I’m missing much. Too much crime, poverty, wars going on. It’s safer down here. Hell, World War Three starts, this the safest place on earth.” Judy laughed.

  “Dr. Hobart lets you go on the surface?” I found this news very surprising, but on taking a closer look at her clothing, I realized that it must be true. Judy’s clothing was plain and neat, but not old or out of fashion. “But the baby. And you — you’re pregnant. You go walking around up there with a troglodyte in your belly?”

  “It took some doing,” she said. “And a maybe a little bit of threatening, but Dr. Hobart came around. I leave Jr. here when I go topside. The Moles look after their own. They won’t let anything bad happen to this little guy while I’m gone,” she said, playing with the infant Mole’s hand and cooing at it.

  “Then why won’t Dr. Hobart let me go home?” I said.

  “Your situation is different. Nobody knows I’m down here. Nobody is looking for me. They’re looking for you. You’re a missing person. And the government knows about the Moles. If they even suspect that you’ve been impregnated, they’ll bag you and you’ll spend the rest of your life in a cell in some top secret government facility. Or worse.”

  I felt a chill run down my spine.

  “This is awful,” I said. “Living down here like Jane Goodall might work for you, but I have a life up there. I have family and friends who will miss me. I have a job. I can’t just give all that up.”

  “You don’t have a choice, Robyn.” Judy gave me a very serious look. “It won’t be forever. Just until you’ve had the baby. Then you can go back. You won’t be a threat to the government any more by then. You won’t have any proof without the baby, so if you try to tell anyone about your experiences, no one will believe you. And you don’t need to worry about the delivery. Dr. Hobart knows what he’s doing.”

  “But what am I going to tell my parents?” I said, exasperated. “My boss?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Judy. “Albert and I will handle it. We’ll talk to your parents, tell them we’re from the government. We’ll tell them you’re fine, but that you were exposed to a virus down here and had to be quarantined. It’s pretty much the truth.”

  I looked down, twisting my fingers together anxiously.

  “Hey, it won’t be so bad,” Judy said, touching me lightly on the knee. “I can get you anything you want from the surface while you’re down here. Even more of those chips.”

  I smiled, touched by her attempt at humor.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, resting my head in my hands, my elbows propped on my knees. “I never should have listened to my friends. ‘Come exploring with us,’ they said. ‘You’ll love it,’ they said. ‘It will be an adventure,’ they said.”

  “You’re telling me this hasn’t been an adventure?” said Judy, raising her eyebrows.

  I had to laugh in spite of myself. “Okay. So they got that part right.”

  We sat in silence for a minute, watching the Moles. Their smooth, muscular gray bodies were indeed beautiful, even if their arms were a little long and their legs a little short. I had trouble keeping my eyes off their dangling members. They seemed to be in a permanent state of partial arousal.

  “So can I trust you?” said Judy, finally breaking the silence.

  I turned to look at her. Her baby was asleep in her arms, sucking its thumb. The sight of it made my ovaries ache.

  “Yeah. You can trust me.”

  “You’re not going to try to escape while we’re gone?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I could find my way back to the surface even if I wanted to,” I said.

  “Good. Because that’s the last place you want to go. You’re safe down here.”

  I nodded to show that I understood.

  “In that case, I’m going to talk Albert into letting you have the run of the place. As long as you stay inside the vault, you should be safe. Take one of the Moles with you, if it makes you feel safer. None of the other Moles will bother you if they know you’ve been accepted.”

  Her words reminded me of Marco and all of the sacrifices he’d made to protect me. I realized that I missed him.

  “What’s wrong?” said Judy, furrowing her brow.

  “There was another Mole,” I said, blushing. “I named him Marco. He saved me from a big albino alligator. And other Moles, before I’d been accepted. And soldiers. He followed me when I ran after Dr. Hobart, but we lost him at the elevator.”

  “Damn,” said Judy, inhaling sharply. “You have been on quite the adventure, haven’t you? You want me to try to find him for you?”

  I shrugged, trying to appear indifferent, but I could feel blood coloring my cheeks.

  Judy nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  There was a sudden loud pounding on the doors that made us both jump.

  27

  The pounding on the doors repeated, followed by a roar of outrage. Judy’s baby began to cry, and even the other Moles sat up and looked over at the doors.

  “That’s him!” I said, jumping to my feet. I’d know that roar anywhere.

  “Well, speak of the devil,” said Judy, trying to calm her baby.

  I rushed over to the window into the lab, waving at the professor.

  “Let him in!” I shouted, trying to be heard over the pounding and the roaring.

  The doctor looked at me like I’d grown wings and a tail.

  “Let him in!” I repeated. “He wants to see me!”

  I’m not sure why I felt certain of this fact, but for some reason I was. Perhaps because he believed I might be the mother of his child.

  The doctor hesitated, his face pale. “He sounds angry,” he said.

  “I’ll talk to him through the door,” I said. “Try to calm him down. Please. The longer you wait, the angrier he’ll get.”

  The doctor closed his eyes. He appeared to be offering up a silent prayer to the gods.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” Dr. Hobart said, turning and walking toward the door.

  I rushed over to the double doors and pounded my own fists against them, matching Marco’s rhythm. The pounding stopped. I had his attention.

  “Marco, it’s me, Robyn,” I said, shouting through the door. “The doctor is going to unlock the door, but you have to promise not to hurt him. It’s not his fault. He’s only trying to help.”

  I knew that Marco couldn’t understand a word I was saying, but I hoped that my calm, steady reassurances would soothe and distract him long enough that the doctor could unlock the doors and retreat without violence. Judy had said that the Moles looked after their own — which explained why Dr. Hobart could wander around the vault unarmed — but Marco sounded mad and I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t hold the doctor responsible.

  I heard a key turn in the lock and then the door slowly opened. Marco was standing on the other side, towering over the doctor, his shoulders rising and falling steadily with excitement and exertion. His face was contorted with some powerful emotion. The doctor, for his part, looked completely terrified. There was sweat running down his face.

  “Thank you, doctor,” I said, smiling pleasantly to show Marco that I was happy and unharmed.

  Marco pushed past the doctor, walked directly up to me, and stuck his face up against my neck, inhaling deeply. He made a mournful sound and his shoulders slumped.

  “He can smell the others on you,” said Judy, who had suddenly appeared behind me. “He knows you’ve been accepted now.”

  I felt a little guilty about what had transpired between me and the other Moles, but there hadn’t been any way for me to avoid it.

  “He’ll get over it,” Judy continued. “He had to present you sooner or later, or you never would have been accepted. He must really like you if he fought so hard to keep you all to himself.”

  I gave Marco a hug and he reluctantly reciprocated, huff
ing dejectedly.

  “So, have you talked some sense into her?” said Dr. Hobart, clearing his throat.

  “Yes,” said Judy. “Robyn understands the situation now. I told her you’d let her come and go as she pleased as long as she stayed inside the vault.”

  Dr. Hobart stiffened. “Well, now, I don’t think that’s a good idea—” he started.

  “Albert.” Judy’s voice was uncompromising.

  Dr. Hobart slumped. “But I suppose ... if you trust her. I mean, well, it can’t hurt. Yes, of course. She’s free to come and go as she pleases. As long as she stays inside the vault.”

  Judy gave me a wink.

  “Did you tell her to bring one of the Moles with her? She shouldn’t be wandering around all by herself,” Dr. Hobart added, speaking quickly. “It’s not that safe. And if she’s pregnant—”

  “I’ll bring Marco with me,” I said, grabbing the big Mole’s arm possessively. “I couldn’t ask for a better bodyguard. He’d do anything to protect me.”

  Dr. Hobart looked Marco up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “Yes, well, I suppose he’ll do. Marco? Is that what you call him? We’ve always called him—”

  “Marco,” Judy interrupted, “is a perfectly good name for a Mole, Albert.”

  The doctor fell silent and then became thoughtful. A moment later, he brightened with a smile.

  “This is excellent news,” he said. “I’m so glad that you came here, Robyn,” he said, turning to me. “I know you went through a lot to get here, and we’ve had our differences, but let’s put all that behind us. You’re going to be the fourth woman to give birth to a homo troglodytes. This is a great day for science!”

  I looked at Judy, having no idea how to respond to the doctor’s enthusiasm. She rolled her eyes at me but quickly smiled when Dr. Hobart turned to look her way.

  “Do you have family?” he said, turning back to me. “We’ll have to prepare our speech,” he said, turning back to Judy. “Did you tell her what we were going to say?”

  “Yes, doctor. I explained everything. We just need to get her details.”

  Dr. Hobart drew his pen and a small notepad from his pocket and quickly took down my name and address, and the names and address of my parents.