Fallout - Chapter 106: The Ghoul Horde and the Mountain of Corpses (Patreon)

The walls of The Pit were crawling with ghouls, packed so densely that they looked like a disturbed ant colony swarming upward from every direction. Many climbed directly over the bodies of their own kind. Those knocked loose and sent tumbling did not hesitate for even a moment. They simply changed direction and kept charging.

Everyone opened fire at once.

Lasers and live rounds crossed through the darkness, forming an almost impenetrable wall of fire.

The Knights’ laser rifles carved brilliant red beams through the dark. Each impact landed with a muffled burst, scorching the feral ghouls at the front of the horde black.

The Minutemen’s ballistic weapons roared in a steady rhythm. Their fire was dense and controlled, and nearly every shot blew apart a ghoul’s skull.

Even so, the horde continued climbing out of the depths of The Pit through the relentless barrage.

The ghouls seemed incapable of feeling pain. A bullet punched through a torso, and the creature merely staggered. A laser burned away half a shoulder, and it dropped to one arm and kept charging. Some had both legs blown apart and simply dragged what remained of their bodies across the metal walkway with their arms at terrifying speed.

Heavy Power Armor footsteps pounded across the station.

One Knight planted his boot on the chest of a feral ghoul that had just hauled itself over the edge. The creature opened its jaws and tried to bite through his leg armor. The Knight raised his rifle and fired, blowing its skull apart.

On the other side, a Minutemen veteran grabbed a ghoul by the neck with one hand and hurled it back into The Pit.

It spun twice through the air before crashing into the dense mass below, knocking down a whole cluster of ghouls that had been climbing after it.

“There are too many! We can’t hold this position!” Preston shouted over the comm channel as he kicked another ghoul back over the edge.

Jace crushed the skull of a ghoul that lunged at him, then blasted another apart with his shotgun.

His eyes swept across the battlefield, and he immediately understood the situation.

The narrow space around the edge of the station was too cramped for them to bring their full firepower to bear. And judging by what he had seen in the vision, there had to be several hundred feral ghouls in The Pit below.

Trying to hold here would be suicide.

“Everyone, fall back!” Jace ordered without hesitation. “Retreat into the tunnel leading back to Station 2!”

The group immediately withdrew in good order, covering one another as they moved.

The Brotherhood Knights fired until their fusion cells were depleted, then stepped back to reload while the Minutemen moved up and poured ballistic fire into the horde. The transition was seamless, giving the ghouls no opening to exploit.

Soon, everyone had fallen back into the narrow mine tunnel.

It was far tighter than the ledge around The Pit, only wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The rock walls on either side provided natural protection and completely eliminated the risk of being flanked.

Here, they no longer had to worry about ghouls coming from every direction.

They only had to hold the passage in front of them.

A new firing line formed immediately.

Lasers and bullets poured down the tunnel once more.

The effect was immediate.

The narrow passage became a meat grinder.

The first feral ghouls through the entrance were shredded by concentrated fire. Those behind them stumbled over the bodies piling up in front, only to have their skulls blown apart the moment they fell.

The corpses quickly stacked up at the tunnel entrance, forming a thick barricade of dead flesh.

The ghouls behind had to climb over the mound to advance.

The instant one raised its head above the pile, it was shot through the skull.

The brutal firefight continued for roughly five minutes.

Then Jace heard that strange call again.

At the exact same moment, the ghouls stopped.

Not just one or two.

Every ghoul froze in the same instant.

No snarling.

No movement.

No sound at all.

Even the mangled bodies still twitching on the ground suddenly went still.

They stood motionless in the darkness beyond the tunnel entrance.

An unnatural silence settled over the mine, so oppressive that it made the skin crawl.

“What are they doing?” one of the Knights whispered. His voice sounded unnaturally clear over the otherwise silent comm channel.

Jace had a vague idea.

“Something’s calling them.”

Then something even stranger happened.

As though they had all received the same command, every ghoul turned around in unison and began retreating toward The Pit.

The dense sound of their footsteps gradually faded into the distance until it disappeared entirely into the darkness.

Preston sounded incredulous.

“They’re retreating?”

No one lowered their guard.

Every weapon remained trained on the darkness beyond the tunnel entrance.

Two full minutes passed without movement before the group finally began lowering their guns.

“Check your ammunition,” Jace ordered.

Everyone immediately took stock.

The battle had not lasted long, but it had consumed a significant amount of ammunition. Against a horde that dense, they had needed sustained heavy fire just to keep the creatures from reaching them.

“I’ve got four magazines left.”

“Three here.”

“My laser rifle’s down to forty percent.”

Jace listened to the reports and nodded.

They still had enough.

Then, without warning, a wave of green energy swept out of the darkness beyond the tunnel entrance.

Everyone felt it.

It was like an invisible blast of hot air, carrying a burning, stinging sensation that penetrated straight through the protective layers of their Power Armor and into their bodies.

The Brotherhood Knights groaned almost simultaneously.

“Damn...” One Knight braced himself against the rock wall, lowering his head. “I’m getting dizzy...”

“Same here... I feel weak... nauseous...”

Another Knight was suffering similar symptoms.

Dizziness.

Weakness.

Nausea.

They checked their status displays and saw that their accumulated radiation exposure had jumped sharply.

Danse was doing considerably better.

He had felt the radiation wave too. The same burning sting had penetrated his T-60 Power Armor.

But his reaction was noticeably milder than that of the other Knights.

He narrowed his eyes slightly and swayed once before regaining his balance.

For certain reasons, radiation affected him far less than it did ordinary people.

The Minutemen, by comparison, were barely affected at all.

Nate glanced down at the display in his Power Armor.

His radiation level had increased, but only slightly. Nowhere near enough to be concerning.

Preston and the other Minutemen veterans were much the same.

They were wearing T-51 Power Armor, the standard military Power Armor of the pre-War U.S. Army. It was built with high-quality materials and offered excellent overall protection.

Its physical, energy, and radiation resistance were all significantly better than those of the T-60.

Its only real disadvantage was the cost.

But that was hardly the armor’s fault.

The T-60 worn by Danse and his Knights, on the other hand, had been deployed domestically as riot-control Power Armor.

Its design philosophy was simple.

Good enough, cheap enough, and easy to produce in large quantities.

It was inexpensive, rugged, and easy to maintain.

Before the War, it had performed extremely well during the suppression of labor unrest inside the United States and security operations in occupied territories such as Canada.

As for Jace...

He was wearing T-45 Power Armor, the earliest Power Armor model fielded by the pre-War U.S. military.

Its radiation protection was even worse than the T-60’s.

When the radiation wave passed through his armor, Jace clearly felt the burning energy seep into his body.

But radiation that would have been dangerous to an ordinary person felt almost nourishing to him.

As a half-ghoul, the green energy passing through his body actually left him feeling slightly more refreshed than before.

It was like taking a drink of ice-cold water in the middle of a sweltering summer day.

Then he heard something.

It was different from the call he had heard earlier.

This sound was fainter and far more numerous.

Like a huge crowd approaching.

Except they were not walking.

They were not running.

They were crawling.

Jace looked down.

His pupils contracted sharply.

Every piece of shattered ghoul flesh on the ground was moving.

Not because of wind.

Not because of vibrations.

They were moving deliberately.

Consciously.

A hand severed at the wrist slowly curled and straightened its five fingers against the ground.

Curl.

Stretch.

Curl.

Stretch.

As though trying to grasp something.

A forearm severed at the elbow was growing new muscle tissue directly from the stump.

Fresh pink flesh spread outward like creeping vines, visibly regenerating before their eyes.

Nearby lay the severed head of a feral ghoul.

Its eyes rolled in their sockets, scanning its surroundings.

Its jaw opened and closed repeatedly, still trying to bite.

The entire floor was covered in severed limbs and chunks of flesh, all writhing and regenerating in different ways.

Trying to put themselves back together.

Danse saw it too.

His voice remained low and steady.

“The Glowing One is here.”

Nate followed Jace’s gaze.

His expression stiffened.

“This is getting ridiculous.”

Danse crouched and aimed his laser rifle at the severed hand crawling across the floor.

He fired once.

The hand burst apart.

Even the fragments continued to twitch, though noticeably more slowly.

“As long as there’s enough radiation, ghoul cells don’t completely die,” Danse said as he stood again, staring into the darkness beyond the tunnel entrance.

“And if those cells can reconnect to a body, they can regain their original function. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the body they came from.”

He paused.

“It doesn’t even have to be a ghoul’s body.”

Jace understood what he meant.

Feral ghouls had no body heat.

Their biological functions did not rely on normal circulation or metabolism.

Radiation provided the energy that kept them functioning.

As long as sufficient radiation was present, their cells would not completely die.

Extreme radiation could activate mutated ghoul cells, forcing them to regenerate damaged tissue and reconnect severed limbs.

And that extraordinary regenerative ability, that level of cellular vitality, was not limited to the ghouls themselves.

Because ghoul tissue could regenerate so aggressively, transplanted organs would not necessarily die from rejection by a recipient’s immune system.

In other words, ghoul organs could even be transplanted into ordinary humans.

That had created a disturbing underground industry.

Some ghouls were captured, trafficked, and butchered so their organs could be sold for profit.

(Note: Like the Super Duper Mart in the Fallout TV series where the female protagonist had her severed finger replaced. The ghouls locked up inside were not being kept for research. They were stock for an “organ farm.”)

Jace looked at Danse.

“Ghoul organs can actually be transplanted?”

Danse nodded.

“People in the Capital Wasteland have made fortunes doing it.”

Jace had no intention of pursuing the subject further.

Something was coming through the darkness outside the tunnel.

A heavy, wet, rhythmic squelching sound drew steadily closer.

Everyone turned toward the entrance.

Then the thing finally emerged from the darkness.

Even Danse, who had seen more than his share of grotesque wasteland creatures, froze.

It was a living mountain of corpses.

Dozens of ghoul bodies had been forcibly fused together.

New connective tissue had grown between different bodies, joining skin to skin while muscle fibers stretched across what had once been separate individuals.

Countless severed limbs protruded from every side of the mass.

Some had already fused completely into place.

Others were still flailing and struggling wildly.

Worse still, it was continuing to absorb the remains scattered across the floor.

Writhing limbs.

Chunks of flesh.

Broken bones.

Anything it touched adhered to its body and immediately began to fuse with it.

A severed arm stuck to the mass.

Within seconds, new tissue grew around it until it had completely joined the creature, its fingers still opening and closing.

The thing was made from countless ghoul bodies kneaded and fused together into one enormous, twisted, living mass.

It grew as it moved.

And worst of all was its front.

The tangled flesh had somehow arranged itself into the rough outline of a warped, grotesque smiling face.

Danse reacted first.

He raised his laser rifle and pulled the trigger.

A crimson beam pierced the darkness and struck one of the heads embedded in the surface of the corpse mountain.

The intense heat scorched through flesh and blasted open a charred wound.

White smoke hissed from the blackened tissue.

Then the regeneration began.

Fresh tissue grew from the edges of the wound.

A thin layer of pink flesh spread across the charred surface, covering it before contracting and sealing the damage.

The entire process took only about five seconds.

The wound had already shrunk to half its original size.

And it was still healing.

The others opened fire.

Danse stared at the writhing mass, his brow furrowed.

“This isn’t normal,” he said quietly. “A Glowing One can revive other ghouls, but it doesn’t usually... fuse them together.”

“Then what the hell is this?” Nate asked.

Danse did not answer.

He had no idea.

Nate raised his rifle and fired.

The bullet slammed into the creature’s torso, blasting out a fist-sized crater.

The muscles around the wound immediately began writhing.

A few seconds later, the damage was gone.

The Knights’ laser fire left several scorched wounds across its body.

Those wounds began disappearing before their eyes.

They could not damage it faster than it could heal.

“How the fuck are we supposed to kill this thing?” one of the Knights shouted over the comm channel.

Preston instinctively stepped back and pulled a frag grenade from his belt.

His finger had already hooked the safety pin.

“Don’t throw it!”

Jace’s sharp voice stopped him immediately.

Preston froze.

“The support structure here is too fragile.”

Jace pointed toward the web of cracks overhead.

“This space is too confined and the tunnel is too narrow. The blast wave won’t have enough room to dissipate. It’ll bounce between the rock walls and shake the ceiling loose.”

“If you throw a grenade in here...”

He did not need to finish.

Everyone understood.

A grenade explosion here could bring the tunnel down on top of them.

Preston glanced at the cracks overhead and immediately put the grenade back on his belt.

Then he looked at the approaching corpse mountain and came up with another idea.

“What about Molotov cocktails? Could sustained heat overwhelm its regeneration?”

Jace paused.

That might actually work.

“Worth trying, but not here. Wait until we reach open ground.”

Jace stared at the grotesque smiling corpse mountain as it continued advancing and growing.

His voice settled back into its usual calm.

“Fall back in stages. We’re returning to Station 1. There’s enough room there to form a full firing line and keep our distance.”