Carlton #6
By Strega

Carlton stretched, tugged his vault suit up where it always sagged, and smiled.  He'd been training for a month now and the Supervisor was finally letting him go outside.

“We send one person out a month,” the Overseer said.  “As you know, this Vault is designed to clone its inhabitants.  Don't worry, there's only one of you: if you don't come back or if we find out you've died, only then will we decant another.  Simpson and Harkness are still sending in reports from Diamond City, and though Watkins hasn't reported back in some time we know he's still alive.  Keep your Pip Boy on you at all times, it monitors your health and will let us know if we need to make another...well, you.”

Carlton checked his gear.  There wasn't much. A standard issue 10mm pistol, two extra magazines, his Vault suit, and a pack with a small amount of food and purified water.  He waited impatiently as the the klaxons sounded and the great gear-shaped Vault door rumbled out, and then he was out.

He blinked owlishly into the daylight.  He'd known nothing but artificial light and the tidy Vault since being born and the outside world was a blindingly bright and confusingly cluttered place..  He remembered the briefings: there was a small settlement on the other side of the woods.  He was to make his way down the slope, careful to leave no trail that might cause someone to find the Vault door in the cave, and turn left when he encountered the trail.  Under no circumstances was he to venture right; an abandoned subway station was a mile in that direction and the info they had suggested those were usually thick with ghouls.

Carlton knew he was being watched.  The Vault Mr. Handy was there among the rocks, painted in a mottled color scheme that made it nearly invisible.  He was not aware that a second set of eyes was upon him.

He was only a hundred yards from the Vault when the attack occurred.  He kept his eyes open for threats but when a bush rustled he reacted too slowly.  A sudden stabbing pain in his calf made him curse but when he yanked his pistol from its holster there was nothing to fire at.  It was as though a wisp of smoke attacked him.

Pistol out, Carlton looked around for whatever had attacked him.  There was nothing.  He considered firing at a bush that swayed in a wind that wasn't there but he mustn't waste ammo or attract unnecessary attention.  By the time he looked down and saw the two rivulets of blood running down his leg he was already having trouble standing.

“What...” Carlton staggered as his leg went numb.  Something had bitten him, something with two sharp fangs that sank through his vault suit and deep into his flesh.  Something poisonous.  He fell to his knees, then onto his side, the pistol sliding from nerveless fingers.  He couldn't move!  The poison didn't seem to be killing him, but it had certainly paralyzed him.

He managed to turn his head enough to see the shaggy shape in the bushes.  It faded into existence, first a wavering outline, then filling out into a dark-furred face. The large eyes and oversized ears told him this was a very young yao guai, hardly bigger than himself. A wash of pink tongue cleaned a drop of blood from its chin.

Yao guai weren't supposed to be poisonous!  Carlton struggled to reach his pistol, but could barely move.  He watched as the bear cub turned its head, looking past him at something.  For a moment it did not move, then it rose on gangly legs and stepped forward.  With a swipe of a paw it flicked his pistol out of reach.  Just in case he recovered enough to grab it, presumably.

'Healthy for a yao guai,' Carlton thought with a strange calmness. 'No boils, healthy fur.  Almost a normal bear, except for those eyes.' And what seemed to be a furry, cylindrical tail, but that was concealed by the bear's body.

The yao guai cub's eyes were emerald green with slit pupils.   Maybe the poison affected his mind, too?  A clawed forepaw rolled him over and with a tug of its fangs it pulled off his pack.  A disinterested shake of its muzzle sent that into the underbrush and it turned its attention to his Pip Boy. It latched its jaws around that and tugged it off his wrist.

'What is it doing,' Carlton wondered.  'Did someone train it to steal?'

The cub rolled him over once more, sniffing at him and nosing his body.  Satisfied he had nothing else on him but the vault suit, it stepped forward until its forelegs straddled his chest and he was looking up at its furry face.  It took all of Carlton's strength to lift an arm, but his attempt to push it away failed to so much as budge the bear.

The cub looked down at the half-paralyzed fingers digging into its fur, then turned its attention back to his face.  Carlton's eyes went wide with horror as it yawned.

And yawned, and yawned, its jaws stretching impossibly wide.  Two needle-sharp fangs that had injected paralyzing poison into him folded flat against the roof of its mouth and a forked black tongue retracted into a sheath.  He had enough time to see the rows of sharp, inward-hooking teeth before it fitted its maw over him and engulfed his entire head.  With a twist of its head it pushed its muzzle farther over him and sudden dark washed over him as his head slid easily into the slick chute of  bear gullet.

Its jaws weren't like a normal yao guai's at all and easily stretched wider as his neck followed his head down its throat.  Nor were its teeth.  The rows of sharp little teeth dug almost painlessly into his skin, then his Vault suit, helping it ratchet its way up over his shoulders as the little bear began to swallow him.

Its body creaked and groaned as it stretched unnaturally, but the little bear's jaws continued to twist, pushing one side forward so its inward-hooking teeth pulled out of his suit.  That side would slide forward perhaps an inch, then dig its teeth in again so the other side could push forward in turn. Slick throat slid up past Carlton's cheeks and over his forehead as bit by bit he was swallowed alive.

With a lurch the bear tensed, gulping for the first time, and Carlton's face slid into the waiting stomach. Its jaws were already to his waist and even if his strength returned his arms were firmly trapped to his sides by the advancing maw. A thick layer of lubricating slime lined its gullet, slicking him down for easier ingestion, and an even thicker layer coated the walls of its stomach.  Unfortunately this was not harmless drool but a viscous, caustic goo that burned his skin wherever it touched.  It only had him half swallowed and already it was beginning to digest him.

It was hardly bigger than he was and he felt it struggle as it worked its jaws over his hips. If he only had his strength back be could knee it or lock his legs around one of its until it either suffocated or hacked him back up.  Somehow it was breathing as it swallowed him bit by bit but there had to be a limit.

He didn't feel the fleshy glottis that slid forward past its lower jaw, extending its windpipe.  It could do this for an hour if it needed to, sucking in air in between movements of its jaws.  It would not need to. The little bear sat back, heaving its jaws upward with a grunt of effort, and gravity sent his hips and rump sliding past inward-hooking fangs into the slippery chute of gullet.  

The bear's flexible ribcage creaked and popped as its body expanded, distending unnaturally to accommodate a meal as large as itself.  Thin fur on its belly stretched until the armored belly scutes showed through.  Like a snake's, these stretched apart and a glimpse of pink skin showed through the pelt as its gut swelled.

If Carlton had weighed fifty pounds more he might not have quite fit.  Not that it would have saved him.  The little yao guai would have sat there quite happily, breathing through its glottis around the legs hanging out, until enough if him was digested to make room in its stomach.

But he didn't weigh fifty pounds more and the slimy walls of the stomach shifted around him as the little yao guai swallowed. One gulp took his knees, the two bloody fang punctures sliding into its maw never to be seen again, then a second and all that was left was his Vault-issued boots and a glimpse of blue where one ankle was partly exposed.  With a last convulsive effort the bear worked its jaws over his feet and swallowed.

A double bulge of boots made its way through the yao guai's neckfur to join the great lumpy swelling of man in the bear's gut.  Like a snake's its stomach was long and elastic and just barely held its meal, but hold it did.  Carlton cursed at the slimy, caustic walls pressing in from all sides.  His strength was finally beginning to return.  It was too late for it to make any difference.

He felt the little bear lurch to its feet, so bloated that its belly dragged the ground, and drag itself laboriously off the trail.  It was looking for a quiet place to digest its meal. Carlton dug his fingers into the slippery meat all around him, failing to make the yao guai react at all.  It was so gorged that a little additional discomfort was missed.

Desperate, Carlton slid his hands between his body and the inward-pressing flesh, feeling for anything he might had missed.  His tool kit?  Gone.  Maybe the pocketknife in his boot?  Also gone. There was nothing, no weapon, no tool with which to escape.  Just the hot meat all around him and the swiftly rising pool of digestive enzymes that would consume him. Already his Vault suit, not designed to be acid-proof, was dissolving.  His boots, tough leather, would last a little longer.  Maybe their metal eyelets and the zipper of his Vault suit would make their way through the bear more or less intact.  The rest of him would not be so fortunate.  In a few days all that would be left of him was a new layer of fat on a young yao guai and whatever droppings were left in its wake.

Carlton lasted long enough to hear it let out a long belch, then settle down to rest.  It had exhausted itself swallowing such a large meal.  Just as he sank into darkness and death he felt it tense, but with inches of mutant bear between himself and daylight he never knew why.

'It's all right,' his mother said without words.  She nuzzled her swollen cub as he stared wide-eyed at the approaching robot.  Her presence gave him comfort, and he watched and learned.

The Vault Mr. Handy hovered over the trail, manipulators picking up the backpack, pistol, Pip Boy, and assorted extras stripped from Carlton before he was swallowed whole.  It spun once in place, taking a last bit of footage of the mother yao guai and its cub.  The cub faded partially from view, then returned as the mother bear nuzzled it.  There was a considerable metabolic effort associated with the cloaking effect and knowing when to use it was something every cub needed to learn.

There was also a considerable effort involved in producing the paralyzing venom.  Learning when to use that was also something every cub must do.  Smaller prey could simply be overpowered and swallowed alive, or at worst killed and then eaten.  Large, dangerous prey – such as, say, an armed human as big as the bear – would be crept up on, incapacitated with a bite, stripped of dangerous gear and then swallowed whole.  The return on the investment of poison and cloaking was quite high when the result was a meal as large as yourself.

The mother bear nuzzled her cub, who let out another long burp and struggled to his feet. He couldn't quite keep his fat belly off the ground, but that's what the armored scutes were for, and he soon dragged himself out of sight in pursuit of his mother.  Carlton #6 was gone down a bear-snake's throat, just as Carlton #4 and #5 had gone  They were soon out of view of not just the Handy's cameras but the camouflaged ones positioned along the trail.

“Told you,” said the researcher.  “She's teaching her cubs now.  She's learned the schedule and now she waits with one of them when it's time for us to send out a clone.”

“And she's learned to strip her meals,” agreed the Overseer.  “And is teaching them that, too.”

“Just as well,” said the researcher.  “It was a pain getting that Pip Boy working after she passed it and I bet she didn't enjoy having that go through.”

“Fascinating creatures, yao-stalkers,” the Overseer said.  “Part snake, part bear.”  He ran the footage back until he got a look at the beast's furry, rattle-tipped tail.  A bit more spooling of the tape and he was looking at the cub's swollen belly, the stretched scutes visible through the fur.  “We are lucky to have some here to study.”

“Yes indeed.  Who shall we send out next?”

“I suspect the mother will bring the smaller cub next time, to train it,” the Overseer said.  “We'll need smaller prey.”  He pressed a control on the console to begin growing Carlton #7, then consulted a list on another screen and pressed a second control.  A pretty blond woman barely into her 20s appeared on the screen.

“Ah, Alice,” the Overseer said cordially.  “Congratulations!  You've been selected as an envoy. You will enter training tomorrow and leave the Vault in one month.”

And proceed shortly thereafter down a bear-snake's throat, he did not tell the smiling woman.  After all, Vault denizens didn't need to know everything.  Just enough to get by.