With
a click, the Pipboy opened, and Drew removed the final holotape,
placing
it back in the box by his feet. He
then
unplugged his Pipboy from the terminal and took a step back, all
without saying a word.
He
didn’t know what to say. What could
he say? It
was hard to believe that any of it could be true, but the evidence
was standing all around him, their
unsettling gazes on him like predators eyeing their prey.
It
also confirmed everything he had suspected. The
Greenclaws had once been human, but not only that, but at
least some of them
were the ones taken from Paulson. From
the tapes, it also sounded like there were seven or eight-foot giants
roaming around,
though
he had heard absolutely nothing about them, not even rumors. That
meant they had either quickly died or were no longer in the region.
That, or they were keeping their heads down.
“It
is an
admittance of guilt,
nothing more,” Matriarch
Lotte said suddenly.
The
booming loudness of her
voice was enough to make
Drew jump in fright.
“The
ramblings from an
evil man.”
Drew
wouldn’t quite call the recordings
that, but he could understand where she was coming from. The
scientist, whoever he was, had tried to do what was right but in the
most monstrous way possible. He
had sacrificed so many people, and
turned them into beasts so
they could destroy the super mutants.
It made him shudder thinking about it.
The matriarch spoke again, this time directly to him. “Thank you
for putting what was on those tapes to rest.”
Drew looked up at her but had to quickly look away, unable to
maintain eye contact. He felt tiny and insignificant in her presence,
like a rodent.
He cleared his throat again. “I would say you’re welcome, but
that seems a little hollow after what we just heard.”
He kept his gaze focused on the ground as he walked into the center
of the room and said the only thing he could. “If there’s
anything else I can do, please ask.”
“Yes,
there is,” the matriarch uttered sharply.
“While I thank you for what you have done for us,
I regret what must happen.”
Before
she had even finished speaking,
large clawed hands
wrapped around him and he
let out a yelp as he was sharply
pulled backward with
enough force to lift him
clean off his feet. His head
was then enveloped
by something as he was
hugged tightly from behind.
It took a moment to realize
what it was, or rather, what
they
were.
His
head was
between a
large
pair
of breasts.
“No,” he heard Ayma’s voice rumble through him. “Not him.”
Drew
realized that it was Ayma who had grabbed him.
For what reason, he wasn’t entirely certain, but from what the
matriarch had said and by Ayma’s
response, it couldn’t
be
anything good.
He
heard the matriarch’s voice rumble,
though
the volume was thankfully muffled by Ayma’s flesh.
“There is none that can know we are here. He will
reveal our location to those he knows. He is
a threat to all of us!”
“No
I’m not!”
he said loudly. “I came here to help you.”
“Yes,
you did and we thank you for that.”
Matriarch
Lotte said.
“But
that does not change what you will do once you have gone. You
will betray us, perhaps
not intentionally, but you will.
That
much is certain!”
Another Greenclaw spoke up in
his defense, but due to the large breasts pressing against the sides
of his head, he struggled to identify the voice and wasn’t sure he
even recognized it.
“He didn’t have to come. He
could have refused, but he didn’t. He did us a favor. He helped us
and we’re gonna repay him with death? You don’t need to eat this
one.”
Drew
was thankful that Ayma was holding him up
because at that moment his
whole body turned to jelly.
He
couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The matriarch not only
wanted to eat
him, but the implication was that she had eaten others.
“Axa!”
the
matriarch shouted
louder
than Drew thought
possible,
her
voice shaking the very air.
“You always object, but you know it must be done! He is a threat!”
“I’m not a threat!” he
shouted. “I came to help you!”
“Your
words mean little, human,” the
matriarch said.
“You tremble at the sight of us. You fear us and that fear is what
makes you dangerous.”
“He’s
not!” Ayma shouted, her
breasts pushing against the sides of his head as she hugged him
tighter.
“You
are protective of him,” the matriarch’s increasingly muffled
voice said. “But you have to understand that he will bring others
to kill us. You know it’s true. That
will only result in more death. To protect the humans and to protect
us, he must die.”
Another voice chimed in, though
she sided with Lotte. “Listen to our leader. She has kept us safe
from the humans!”
“Remember
Sally?” yet another voice asked. “We found her injured, brought
her here, and nursed her
back to health. She repaid us by bringing her brethren here to kill
us!”
“I wouldn’t do that!” he
tried to tell them.
“Sally said the same thing!”
a fourth voice added.
“She is right,” another
voice said. “You remember how Kiki and Varan were hurt because of
Sally? You trusted her, too. You and Axa defended her. You wanted to
help her and she tried to kill us!”
Drew felt Ayma’s grip on him
start to loosen.
The
matriarch continued.
“I know you care for him, Ayma.
I
know that you feel you knew him from before,
but
you also
know
what
I am saying is
true. Humans have to destroy what they fear. It’s in their nature.
He
fears us so he will destroy us, and
if what you say is true then he will return with an army of robots to
do it for him.
We
cannot allow that to happen. This
is the best way. This is the only way. Because of Sally, we lost
Kenna.
If
we let him live someone else might die. It might even be Kiki.”
Drew
had to admit that
what the matriarch was saying made a lot of sense, though
it didn’t apply to him, not
in this situation.
Unfortunately,
it seemed that Ayma agreed with
her leader
as she released her
hold on him, causing
him to stumble on
his trembling legs and
almost fall.
“Ayma,”
he heard Kiki utter from behind. “What are you doing?”
“Sh-she’s right,” Ayma
stammered.
Drew shook his head as he
turned to face her.
“She’s not right, Gemma,”
he uttered as he reached out to her. “She’s not right. I would
never do that to you, you know I wouldn’t.”
Ayma twitched at the mention of
the name, something she had done before at the Mega Stop. He wasn’t
absolutely certain that she was actually Gemma, but she had given a
lot of clues that suggested she was. Enough that he believed it was
true. Enough to use it as a last-ditch attempt to save his skin.
“She is right,” Ayma said,
unable to meet his eyes.
“You know she isn’t,” he
tried to argue.
It fell on deaf ears.
The
ground trembled and Ayma took several steps back, her
gaze turning upward to
the matriarch. As a
giant hand closed around him from
behind,
he knew he was doomed. He didn’t even have his laser rifle on him,
he’d left it in the room where they’d retrieved the holotapes.
With a rush of nauseating
speed, the matriarch rose him up towards the ceiling. At eye-level,
she reached in with her left hand, and with a pinch of her clawed
forefinger and thumb, she plucked him from her right hand and held
him with the tips of her claws, gripping his body painfully between
them.
There was no escape now.
From his perspective, he could
see all the Greenclaws looking up at him, including Ayma. Even from
up there near the rafters he could see the look of sadness and sorrow
on her face.
“I
love you, Gemma,” he shouted
out
loud. “I accept what you’ve become and I don’t hate you for
it.
I’m
sorry I couldn’t save
you from
what happened.”
The
matriarch rose him up high above her head. Her
colossal mouth opened and
her gargantuan tongue flopped
out. It then
began
to swirl
menacingly
from side to side as she held him high above her waiting
and
eager throat.
As
Drew stared down into his cavernous demise, he remembered a
dream he’d long
since forgotten. It was the one where he was
in the bus
being
eaten by the gargantuan deathclaw. That
nightmare had been triggered by being trapped inside a bus while one
of the Greenclaws had prowled outside. In fact, if he recalled that
had been his very first encounter.
The
deathclaw in the dream had been absolutely humongous and while
Lotte was big, she was nowhere near as big as it
had been.
Even so, she was still easily
big
enough to swallow him whole.
“Stop!”
The yell hadn’t come from Ayma, but Kiki. “You can’t eat him,
Lotte!
This
isn’t right, I won’t let you!”
The
maw closed and
Drew
found
himself
in
front of her snout being blasted by her hot breath.
“You
won’t let
me?” she
asked, incredulously as
she turned her gaze down to her brazen subject.
“You plan on stopping me?”
Kiki
didn’t back down. “He
knew us from before. I
think I’m starting to remember him. If
we kill him then
we
kill a part of ourselves!”
Drew
started to feel hope again. He had been absolutely certain that he
was going to die, and yet, Kiki was coming to his defense.
“She’s
right,” a Greenclaw
he didn’t recognize agreed.
“If we keep killing people, especially those that help us, then
maybe we deserve to be hunted.”
Much to his surprise, Neka
showed him her support as well. It was a surprise since when they
first met she had wanted to kill him. “Eating him isn’t the
answer. He’s already had plenty of opportunities to betray us, but
he hasn’t.”
Drew
decided that now was probably a good time to speak. “The man in the
recordings,” he said loudly. “He spoke
of a settlement up north where they took twenty
people. That had to have been Paulson.”
A Greenclaw which stood by the
matriarch’s side, both physically and metaphorically, wasn’t
swayed by any of their arguments. “Eat him and finish this.”
He looked at Ayma. “You’re
Gemma, I’m sure of it.”
She looked away.
He focused on Kiki. “I
remember you. You went by Kiki back then, too. You were beautiful and
had a crush on me, but I was with Gemma.”
“I think I remember,” Kiki
said.
Drew looked at Neka as he tried
to think of who she was, but there was nothing obvious that gave it
away, so he looked at another and pointed.
“What’s your name?” he
asked.
“Axa,” she answered.
Drew thought of who she could
be for a moment before she beat him to the punch.
“My name is Lexa,” she
said, her eyes growing wide. “I think I remember.”
Drew turned his head to face
the matriarch. She had been referred to as Lotte, which gave him a
clue.
“You must be Charlotte,” he
said.
“My name is Lotte,” she
uttered loudly. “Matriarch Lotte to you.”
“But you weren’t always
called that. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” she said as she once
more raised him up above her head and opened her mouth.
“You were a pretty muscular
girl, even back then,” he said quickly, knowing his time was
limited. “You were tall, too. Do you remember the time we headed
out to take out that troublesome Yao Guai pack?”
Lotte frowned as she closed her
mouth and lowered him back down to eye level.
“Do you remember?” he
asked, hopefully.
“I think…” She shook her
head. “You are trying to confuse me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Listen to him,” Kiki
urged. “He can help us remember who we are.”
“We need him!” another
voice shouted.
“You eat him and we might
lose the only one left who knows who we are!” Axa said.
“Listen to them,” Neka
added. “They’re right.”
Lotte shook her head. “No,
they are not.”
She rose him back up, opened
her mouth, and then…
And then…
And then she did nothing. She
stared up at him, a frown forming on her face before she yet again
lowered him back down to eye level.
Drew barely dared hope that he
would survive the encounter after all.
“You got your pants caught on
the branch of an old fallen tree,” she said, the faintest hint of a
smile flickering across her face.
“Yeah, and I tore them,” he
said.
“I do remember that.”
For the first time, Lotte
looked genuinely conflicted.
Drew decided to try and push it
in his favor. “I love Gemma, Charlotte. I’d never do anything to
put her at risk, no matter what she has become. You know that.”
“A nice sentiment,” Lotte
said, “but I’m not sure I can believe it. Things have changed.
Kiki holds Ayma’s heart now. You are just a human. Small, weak,
fragile.”
“There’s room in my heart
for one more,” Kiki said.
For the first time since
letting him go, Ayma spoke, agreeing with Kiki. “Yes, there is room
for one more in our hearts. Ever since I first saw him, I felt a
connection. I can’t lose him, not again.”
Lotte focused back on Drew
before she lowered him down to the concrete floor and let him go. He
dropped about three feet and stumbled before falling onto his hands
and knees. He felt like he was going to vomit.
The matriarch’s voice boomed
overhead. “What will you have me do with him?” she asked.
“Keep him here,” Kiki said.
“Humans are too slimy and
sneaky.” Lotte shook her massive head. “No, we can’t keep him
here. He is a risk.”
“Then what?” Neka asked.
The
matriarch took in a deep breath before she closed her eyes. “I
don’t know.”
Ayma
offered an option. “If
we cannot keep him here, then I
would like to return him home
to
his factory.”
Lotte smiled. “Yes, that’s
it!” she exclaimed loudly.
“Return him home?” Ayma
asked, confused as to why she sounded so excited about the
suggestion.
“A test,” Lotte said. “A
test to see if he can be trusted.”
“What kind of test?” Kiki
asked looking nervous.
“A potentially stupid one,”
the matriarch answered before explaining her plan. “I want Ayma and
Neka to go with him back to his factory.”
Neka
was surprised. “Me? Why
me?”
Kiki raised a clawed hand. “I
could go.”
“No!” Lotte said firmly. “I
want them to observe him to see if he is a threat, which will be
difficult for you due to your size.”
Drew pushed himself up off the
floor, barely able to get his footing on his shaking legs.
“There are others there with
me,” he said, his voice trembling like the rest of him. “Two of
them are also from Paulson.”
“Who?” Lotte asked.
“Jack and Amy.”
One of the Greenclaws made a
peculiar noise which the others picked up on.
“It looks like Glower
recognizes one of the names,” Neka said.
Drew continued. “There’s
also a doctor there, Sarah.”
“Do you get frequent
visitors?” Lotte asked him.
Drew shook his head. “We
don’t get any visitors. At least not at the moment.”
“Good. Then Neka and Ayma
will accompany you back there tomorrow. Then in a week, they will
return with their findings. If they do not return, then I will know
you betrayed us. We will then come to your factory and I will
personally devour you. But I will eat your friends first.
Understood?”
“I won’t betray you,” he
promised.
“And what of the others?”
Lotte questioned him. “Will they betray us?”
“I can speak for Jack and
Amy. For Sarah, I don’t know.”
It was a lie, he couldn’t
speak for Jack or Amy. He had no idea how they would react when he
returned with two Greenclaws in tow. He doubted it would be anything
positive.
“Then
it is settled,” Lotte said. “Ayma, Neka, he is your
responsibility now. He will spend the night here
and
you
will leave
tomorrow. Now, all of you depart, I want to be alone to
dwell on the day’s events.”
Ayma
walked back over to Drew and threw her arms around him in a hug,
lifting
him up off his feet and unintentionally
shoving his face once
more between
her large mammaries. It
was something
that was very
quickly
becoming a thing
between the two of them.
“I’m
glad you’re okay. Come on, I’ll take you somewhere you can
sleep.”
She released him and he
followed her out of the large room and headed down the corridor to a
small barren room that was adorned by a single metal-framed bed with
an old mattress, and a broken chest of drawers.
“You’ll sleep here
tonight,” Ayma told him before she turned to leave.
Drew held out a longing hand.
“Can you-uh… Stay?”
“You want me to stay?” Ayma
asked, turning back around.
“I think I’d sleep better
if you were in the room.”
She
smiled at him. “I’ll go get your laser gun
and bring it here.”
“And you’ll stay?”
She nodded. “Unlike you
humans, we don’t need beds. I’ll sleep on the floor near the
door.”
“If you’re sure,” he
said. “And thank you.”
His limbs began to shake anew
as she turned and left. He practically collapsed onto the bed as he
started to dry-heave. He couldn’t believe how close he had gotten
to being eaten. If it hadn’t been for Kiki, he was sure he’d be
dead now. That, or slowly being digested alive.
It was horrifying and
unconscionable. When he had first arrived, there had been absolutely
no thought of betraying them, but now? Now that he knew that
Charlotte ate people? He couldn’t believe it and he
certainly couldn’t understand it.
The door opened and Ayma
stepped back into the room. She placed his laser rifle down on top of
the old chest of drawers.
“There you go.”
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he admitted.
“Almost being eaten alive has taken it out of me.”
Ayma looked away, shame etched
on her reptilian face. Drew couldn’t be mad at her for not standing
up for him. Things had been difficult and with her sketchy memory, he
was practically a stranger.
“I should have fought
harder,” she said. “It took Kiki, Axa, and Neka to speak for you
to make me realize that Lotte was wrong.”
“So
it wasn’t the fact that she was going to eat
me!?” he asked, feeling his ire rise. He forced it back down.
“Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” she
asked. “You’re the one that was almost eaten. It is us that
should be apologizing.”
“Yeah,
I know. I
was there dangling above her gaping throat.”
Ayma sat down on the floor at
the base of the bed. “I’m the one that’s sorry, Drew. I let you
go and almost got you killed. I don’t even know how we got here.
Lotte eating people? Somewhere things went wrong.”
“It went wrong when the super
mutants took you from Paulson,” Drew said. “I couldn’t stop
them. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“Don’t think about it. Go
to sleep,” Ayma said as she curled up onto the floor after
switching off the light. “We have to get up early tomorrow.”
After what had happened, he
wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep. Images of dangling above
Lotte’s mouth were burned into his brain. He had been a few words
from being devoured alive and he felt that he wouldn’t be safe
until he was back home at the Robco plant.
Unfortunately, that would lead
to something else he was dreading and that was introducing Ayma and
Neka to the others. He had absolutely no idea how he was going to do
it and was considering trying to hide them somewhere. He knew that
wouldn’t work, though. Amy and Jack liked to explore the place and
anywhere he hid them they were certain to find.
There was no way out of it and
he knew that events had fallen out of his control. For good or ill,
Ayma and Neka would meet Amy, Jack, and Sarah, and events would
unfold however they unfolded.
No matter what happened, he
knew he wasn’t looking forward to it, but with the contents of the
holotape saved to his Pipboy, at the very least he could let the man
responsible for it all explain it for him.
“Are you still awake?”
The question caught Drew off
guard. He glanced over to see her staring at him from where she was
laying on the floor.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’m
still awake.”
“What was I like?” she
asked. “Back before. When I was human.”
It took him a few moments to
gather his thoughts. “You were funny, beautiful and amazing. I
thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together. We completed
each other.”
“I think we did,” Ayma
said. “When I saw Neka drag you out of the building at the Red
Rocket stop, I immediately felt something. Like recognition.”
“Is that why you picked me
up?” he asked.
“Yeah. I wanted to get a
better look at you. Even the way you smelled felt familiar.”
“I hope it’s not a bad
smell.”
“No, it’s a nice one,”
she said. “I’m sorry that I’m not her anymore.”
“I think we’ve apologized
enough to each other. Let’s just accept what’s happened and move
on. It’s the only way we’ll get through it.”
“I suppose,” she said.
“Well, we need to be up early tomorrow, so goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he said,
rolling over and closing his eyes.
Tomorrow was going to be an
interesting day, one that he was certainly not looking forward to.