Young Writers Society

Critical failure in cryogenic array. All Vault reidents must acate immediately.

As the metallic pod door opened, Jacob collapsed to the ground, shaking and moaning. Had he been frozen? Had the "safety" of the Vaults been a lie? Was his wife really dead? What had happened?

After several minutes, Jacob slowly started to stand up, leaning on part of his pod before moving towards his wife's. Trembling, he pressed the emergency evacuation button, watching the pod open with fear in his eyes and both love and hate in his heart. Half-frozen blood covered her Vault, her eyes were cloudy, gray, no longer the leafy green that he knew so well.

He slipped her wedding ring off, vowing, "I'll find who did this, Barbara... and I'll get James back." Tears filled his eyes as he kissed her frost-filled red hair. "I promise." He took a step back and closed the pod door again before noticing something he thought peculiar-- no one else was getting out.

One by one, he peered through the frosty screens, looking for any sign of life. Jacob walked through the sliding Vault door, going through the next room of pods.

Dead.

They were all dead.

And he was very alone.

He sat on the ground in the hallway, tears streaming down his old, bearded face. I'm alone, he thought. There's no one left but me, no one here, no one alive...

Me and James, he corrected. James is out there, somewhere... I've just gotta... gotta remember the way out...

He slid his back up the wall, standing, shaking. He walked towards the door that he had passed through when he had first arrived, only to find it locked. "Damn it," he cursed, resisting the urge to kick the door. Jacob took in a shaky deep breath and tried the other door. Jacob was already walking through before it was completely open, nervously stepping down a small staircase. He turned to the right, following the hall when he saw a giant, monstrous bug on the other side of a window.

"Giant... giant cockroaches," he muttered. He looked around for some kind of weapon, anything that could be used to squash them. In the corner of a room, Jacob snatched up a rusty security baton. That, if nothing else, would help.

Keeping the baton at the ready, he moved on, coming to a small, messy office that smelled of rust and mildew. Empty cigarette cartons and coffee mugs littered the ground, and all of the filing drawers were open and empty, apart from a bobby pin he snatched up and a stimpak he found laying on the floor.

"These could be useful," he said quietly, pocketing them.

He turned and left the room, going back to follow the long, never-ending hallway. A light flickered overhead as Jacob opened the next door. On the ground, about ten feet ahead of him, one of the giant roaches lay dormant, its body remaining still and unmoving. He inched closer to kill it in one swift blow, he it heard his footsteps. Scuttling to the side, it unleashed an evil hiss before Jacob slammed the baton down on its back, a loud crunch sounding as the baton went through its exoskeleton.

Jacob looked at the gooey entrails with disgust before listening for any other roaches in the room. When he was satisfied there were none, he moved on into the next room. Power transformers took up the middle of the room, forcing him to skirt around the edges. He heard a hiss and turned his head, seeing a roach on top of a skeleton. He squashed the bug and ran through the next door-- into two more.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Jacob growled, stomping on on as he slapped the other down with his baton. "How did you get so big?"

Beside the next door was a water fountain. It was luke-warm, but it satisfied him. Jacob opened the next door to find--

A gun. There was a gun on a desk in a larger room. Ammo cases were on the desk and the ground, and there was another gun-- some kind of heavy flamer or something-- locked up in a case. Jacob hooked the baton on his Vault suit's belt loop and picked up the gun, immediately loading it with bullets. He searched the room for more boxes of ammo, piling them up on the table. Doing some quick math, he estimated he had at least sixty rounds.

Jacob found a large satchel under the desk and scooped the boxes inside. "These'll be useful... then again, better save them for the people that took James..."

He made sure that the safety was on his gun before putting it in his satchel. He unhooked his baton and placed it on the table, staring at the next door. He sat at the desk terminal and rummaged through the drawers one last time, taking another bobby pin, a few stimpaks, a Radaway, a pen, and a notepad. Packing those items into his satchel, he started to mess with the terminal, selecting an option that would unlock the door. As soon as he clicked on it, the door immediately started to open. Jacob smiled, apparently, satisfied with himself, and moved on through the door.

He was faced with three more bugs in the hall, which he killed rather quickly. coming again to another door, he was attacked by two more, stomping on one and slamming the baton down on the other.

There was another door, and Jacob sighed as he passed through it before realizing that he was now at the Vault entrance. If he could open the Vault door, slide the bridge across, and get to the other side, he could use the platform that brought him down to go to the sur--

A hiss interrupted his thoughts as a roach jumped on his leg. Jacob released a blood-curdling scream as it climbed his leg. He slammed his baron down on it, crushing the bug but hurting his leg. "Fuck it all to shit!" he growled, using the end of the baton to scrape the guts of the bug off of his leg. "Damn you!"

Jacob took a deep breath, clenching his eyes shut as he tried to block out the wave of pain that had followed his ill-placed strike. Where the hell had it come from? More importantly, why the hell hadn't he just nudged it off and then crushed it instead of destroying his needed limb?

He limped forward, heading towards the Vault controls. A small warning read "Pip-Boy Cord Here." One lay on the floor nearby. Picking it up, he unlocked the wrist piece and wrapped it around his left arm. He turned it on and the Vault Boy flashed on screen, giving him a thumbs-up.

He unhooked a cord from the Pip-Boy and plugged it into the Vault controls before flipping a lever that made the door slide open and a bridge stretch across the gap to the other side. He rushed over, stepping down the staircase, and onto the platform. It slowly began to rise. The computer voice sounded one last time, saying, Enjoy your return to the surface, and thank you for choosing Vault-Tec.