Vault

Dust Bowl

I feel my eyes slip closed as my mind floods with the feeling of exhaustion and I lay down on the uneven floorboards between the table and the large trunk. I sleep like a stone, and when I finally awake and I open my eyes again I am against the wall on the very thin stained mattress that Wentz had been asleep on earlier. I roll over and blink away the haziness pawing around on the bed until my hand hits my glasses. When I slide them up my nose I see Wentz digging around in the fridge and placing things on the table. 

When I pull myself up to sit the mattress creaks loudly in protest, I blush brightly when his attention comes away from the fridge and snaps onto me, a bright smile spreads across his face. "Good morning sunshine, I have some food if you want. Not much and probably nothing that you are used to, but I hope you like it." He looks away nervously as I stand and shuffle sleepily over to the table. "So I am going to try and go out later to find some more food for us, as I wasn't really expecting company here." He chuckles nervously as I plop down in the chair. I stretch out my arms and roll the joints they crackle but I feel instantly better. 

Wentz slides the other chair that is really just an old crate up to the table. I smile as he has set up plates, cutlery, and glasses filled with water. In the middle of the table lays packages of things I have never seen before. I pick one up and read over the label my eyebrow raises into my hairline when I see the expiration date is like over 100 years ago. What even are Dandy boy apple cakes?

I open the box and shake the contents out onto my plate and out slides two circular cakes. They are individually wrapped so I slide one over to Wentz, his eyes light up as if I have just handed him the greatest gift ever. 

He sits down and opens the package excitedly and crams the whole thing in his mouth in one go. I stare at him for a moment and he shrugs "Whut Ive bween swaving fhese." He says with a mouth full of food, some crumbs spraying across the table as he gobbles the cake down. I chuckle and open my own package poking at the slightly rubbery substance before picking it up and taking a bite.

I chew it for a second and my immediate thought is to just spit it back out, as it is very chewy and incredibly dry, but when I take another bite the inside goo tastes actually really good, kind of like stale oatmeal but not half bad. The aftertaste makes me want to scrape my mouth out though. But all in all, this is actually kind of better than some of the vault food, which is very surprising. However when I finish it my pipboy beeps quietly and when I look down at it, it reads +3 RADS. My heart flutters with panic and I quickly pull my wrist up close to my face and scroll through the manual to make sure that this will not actually kill me. Thoughts of all the mutated people that had come into my clinic flash through my mind and I get a bit queasy. 

I can feel Wentz's eyes on me as I have an internal panic about it, I let out a huge sigh of relief when it tells me that I will have to do a lot more before it will even come close to killing me. We sit and eat some more of the snacks that Wentz has to offer, some of them taste pretty good whatever these sugar puffs things are I love them. We sit at the table in silence as we munch on the food until Wentz pipes up. 

"So what was it like living in the vault?" When I look at him his eyes are wide and curious he is leaning toward me slightly and waiting for some huge revelation of awesomeness. I gulp and take a sip of my water and look down at the table and shrug my shoulders. 

"Well...Um, it was a lot different than this." I say bluntly and Wentz gestures for me to elaborate. " Well for starters the food wasn't radiated." I see Wentz deflate a little bit, his smile fading and he looks down at the table sadly and I immediately regret saying it and wish that I could take it back so I quickly try and backtrack. "But I mean it was kind of like living in a giant metal, there was only so much to do, so much to explore. There was no way to get away from anyone and every day would be exactly the same as the last. There were no windows no television, really there was next to nothing to do, not even a radio to listen to." I sigh and look down at the table reminiscing about the stories that my father used to tell me. "I mean we had like one violin but no one ever knew how to play it, I think someone broke a string on it and I am pretty sure that it got thrown into the incinerator or something. Everything had to be shared and reused because it wasn't like we could go out and get another one.  It was claustrophobic and boring. Before these past few days, I have never actually run anywhere. I have never seen the sun or felt it on my skin. I have never seen someone like you or your friends, only heard stories. It was like living in a bubble where nothing ever changes and nothing bad ever happened." 

Wentz is leaning on his elbow halfway across the small table listening intently. I blush slightly when I finish rambling and Wentz leans back slightly, almost causing the crate he is sitting upon to tumble over. "Sounds nice." He says simply humming to himself slightly before pushing away from the table. "I am going to go out and get more food. You should be safe in here. Just in case I will lock you in okay?" 

I want to say no and beg him to take me with him because all the other people in this camp scare the hell out of me and he is the only thing keeping me safe. But then again anything he runs into out there would probably kill me instantly I would just slow him down. "Um okay. It's not like I mind being locked in always have been." I try to joke, chuckling half-heartedly but Wentz looks kind of sad when I say it.

He empties my bag of stuff on the bed, all of my things bouncing across the mattress and takes the empty sack with him before slipping out the door. I hear the faint noise of a padlock clicking into place. I rush and press my eye against one of the cracks in the wall and watch as Wentz struts out of camp shoulders back and head held high. I see him growl at one of the raiders who quickly ducks their head and runs away. The other raiders seem to know that Wentz means business, some sort of hierarchy. I feel some comfort in that, because if he has a high status that means, that hopefully, no one will try to go against his threats about not touching me.

Which is fantastic really except now I have nothing to do with myself. I sigh and pace the room for a moment, up and down and the floorboards creak. I hiss in pain when it causes one of my cuts to reopen. Which reminds me that they should be cleaned and treated before infection sets in. I open the fridge and in the bottom is a large metal bucket filled with water. I grab the cups from the table and fill them up with the water. I strip off my dirty, bloodstained and tattered vault suit and already feel instantly better out of the disgusting clothes. I then tear it into pieces and use them as makeshift rags. I dip one into the water and sit on the chair in my boxer shorts. I spend the next hour or more carefully cleaning all of the cuts, scrapes and the rest of my pale skin. I have to refill the cups many times but I am careful not to soil the water in the fridge as it seems to be the only thing to drink in here. When I finally finish I sigh in relief, my skin had turned a few shades darker in the areas where it was exposed to the sun, the backs of my hands a bright red compared to my pale arms. I try to find some sort of herbs, or anything that could help with the healing process, as I know that there is definitely cuts on my back that I couldn't reach. I'd be damned if I ever asked Wentz to help me with those.  I find nothing that would be useful. 

I change into a fresh set of clothes and stack the rest of my things neatly on top of the locked trunk. I wish I could see what was inside of it, just to have something to do because I am kind of bored out of my mind at the moment. I sit on the bed and lean up against the wall and decide to fiddle with all the settings and extras on my pipboy. There is nothing too exciting, just things that I already knew of but there is a function that is broken, it seems like it was supposed to be some sort of GPS system because it is under the 'map' function. I don't think too much of it because I will probably never need it. 

I sigh and wonder how long it will take Wentz to return. I kind of miss him.