'So here we are' I thought as our convoy arrived at Republic from the south, stopping at an old church. The plan we made up was simple, we would go through all of the stores and anywhere else of value, find a central place to set up camp and store our loot, and then come back the following day and go through all the housing in the southern section of town and anywhere else we skipped.
We would split up into three different parties. Roy, John, and Chris would take a jeep to check the hospital and northern stores, which included the sheriff's office, looting them and checking the hospital to see whether or not it would be a good base. George, me, Max, and Beth would take the eastern portion of town with a truck and the second jeep, and finally Lisa, Chris, Lizzy, and Boxer would check out the western and southern areas with the remaining truck.
As we divided up into our three teams, George spoke up "Alright kids, be careful and on alert. While the town's mostly empty, there's still going to be the occasional radroach and ghoul, especially in the north, so be extra alert north team.". Roy and Chris nodded in response, with John letting out a grunt as he climbed down from the truck he was in. George then continued "Alright, just make sure not to go out of town, since there are other people living nearby the town." He said, reminding us of the numerous farmers to the north, a small group of raiders who lived on the highway to the west of Republic, and a follower's of the apocalypse outpost that was in the old high school on the road back east to the red rocket gas station.
We nodded and went our own ways, starting the job of cleaning out Republic
3 Hours Later
It was about three hours since we had started, and we had made good progress. We had already looted a small amount of gas stations, grocery stores, private businesses, the federal bank, and the court. It was going good for the other teams as well, with Chris's team already scavenging through the western portion and already working their way south, making their way to the city hall and the bank. Meanwhile, Johns team had finished up their scavenging and were now at the hospital, clearing it out. I had heard over our radio the there were a few ghouls, but they were being dealt with. Otherwise, the hospital looked like it was in good condition, with only a couple of holes in the perimeter's concrete fence and damage to one of the outer buildings, along with the more than 200 years worth of decay.
I was walking in the street, next to the slowly moving truck, with the jeep behind us, when I saw a glimmer in a nearby grocery store. Curious, I went in the investigate, motioning for George to follow. As we entered the store I took notice of my surroundings. The store was small, with a checkout counter on the left, and 5 isles in front of me, with moldy and out of date products, with an occasional skeleton lying on the ground. But what got my attention was the metal door in the back, with a slight glow coming from a small window in it. As I walked toward it, I prepped my m4, and I heard George pump his shotgun, ready to meet any threats.
We soon reached the door and after waiting a moment, breached the room. What I saw surprised me. Half of the room was covered in what looked like a blue tinted force field. What really got my attention though, was the food inside of it. There were breads, cheeses, meats, chips, cans, and fruit. "There was a Preservation field here?!" I looked over at George, who was just as shocked as I was, staring at the field. "If I had known that this was here, I would've come here months ago." At my slightly confused look, he chuckled and said "I've been looking for this kind of thing for a while now, and I would have searched this store, except the only grocery stores that usually do have them are ones belonging to big companies, and even then they're usually only found in the bigger towns and cities."
After a little while and a discussion with Beth, we decided to lock up the room and leave it for now, promising to return once we had a proper storage area set up. As I left the store, I wiped my face with a piece of cloth, looking around the town. Besides some minor decay and an occasional crashed car or more damaged building, the town looked to be in good condition.
4 Hours later
It was starting to get dark by the time we all finished up and met at the hospital. Everyone had little difficulty scavenging, occasionally encountering a ghoul, radroach, or mole rat. The only ones who had trouble were the hospital team, where they had some trouble with a bunch of ghouls who were on one of the top floors. Even so, they managed to clear them out within half an hour.
We had agreed to leave behind anything too big, heavy, or numerous to scavenge later, marking the locations on the map and taking the smaller and useful items. We collected numerous guns, ammo, food, water, med supplies, tools, and some other utility items. We left the other supplies (like the bulk food, construction material, etc.) to either be collected within the next few days, or to be left there until we needed them or had an efficient way to transport and store them.
"A toast! To a great beginning!" Max hollered, raising his bottle of water in the air. A few of the others responding in kind, or just nodded in agreement. As they did so, I looked out of a nearby window facing south and I could see one of our jeeps coming back from the farm. As a moving in gift, George had left us the two trucks and said we're welcome back to the farm anytime. Roy had gone ahead and driven the George back in the jeep, and was now returning with Nat.
I looked to the right, seeing the sun set, a sight that I haven't gotten tired of since we left the vault a few days ago. I heard a shuffle and I looked over to see Beth standing right next to me, watching the sunset with me. Looking back at it, I thought of all the hardships that we'll soon have to face. We'll have to scavenge the rest of the town and fortify the hospital, repairing its perimeter defenses and bringing its front blast door, it's couple of lobby turrets, and the camera system back online. We'll have to meet up and discuss relations with the nearby groups and possibly take out the raider gang. We'll have to recruit more people and prepare them to fight against scum like raiders and slavers. I thought over these things and more, wondering how we would be able to accomplish this. Then, Beth nudged me, making me look over at her curiously. "You're thinking about the future, aren't you?" She asked, knowing what I was just thinking. "Yeah" I responded "You're not the only one, but for now, let's just relax and leave the thinking and planning for tomorrow, okay?" She said, slight concern on her face. After chuckling, I said "Alright, I guess that's a good idea." She smiled and taking my hand, she led me back to the group.
About an hour later I was in bed. We had agreed to take our own separate rooms and had them on the third floor. John had agreed to take the first shift and Chris the second after midnight.
I heard a knock on the door, and looking up, I saw Beth standing there. "Hey Billy, do you mind if I can sleep here tonight, I just can't seem to sleep." Nodding sleepily, I patted the other side of my bed, earning a soft smile from Beth as she walked over and crawled under the covers.
"Good night Billy." She said, starting to drift off to sleep. I replied in kind, turning on my side and closing my eyes, resting myself for the tasks needed to be done within the next few days.
After I woke up, everyone went to do their own duties. Lisa started working on bring the hospital's defences online, with me helping repair them, The defences consisted of two mark 3 turrets inside the main lobby and steel blast shields that cover the main entrance, the two secondary entrances, and all windows on the bottom floor. Meanwhile, Beth went on to catalogue everything we had looted. Everyone else was either working on repair or cleaning the hospital or looting the residential area and any stores that were missed, with the exception of John, who took a jeep to check up on Elza and Jordan, which were both healing greatly.
It was around noon when Max noticed smoke rising from the north. After notifying George, he said that there were some farms in the area. We weren't sure exactly what to do, since we didn't want to rush in blindly, but then I remembered my Mister Gutsy. I ran to the jeep where it was waiting, activating it "This unit is fully operational, what are my orders, sir!" The Mister Gutsy exclaimed, even giving a small salute with one of its mechanical arms.
After chuckling to myself, I said "Unit, you will scout north to the big fire over there." I pointed at it, letting the Gutsy see it's objective "You will provide live video feed of what's there and do not engage anyone, understand?" The gutsy took a second to process this and said "Sir, yes sir!" Proudly but with also a little disappointment, no doubt at not being able to get into a fight. Since we had left the vault, I had managed to upgrade the Gutsy significantly, giving him two weapons. The first one was a mister handy arm saw, which I took with me when we left the vault. There was also a mark 2 turret attached to another arm, which I got from a scrapped turret at the farm. There, I had installed both of these weapons and tweaked the Gutsy's system so it would work. Even so, I decided it wouldn't be good to combat test the unit just yet.
Me and the others decided on a battle plan. We would send the gutsy ahead of us by ten minutes and then go after him in the jeeps and one of the trucks. We would leave behind Sarah and Beth to watch over the hospital, but what surprised me is who else we would have on our trip, Elza. She had gotten well enough to jog and wanted to come with us, saying that any farmers in the area would likely recognize her, plus she was good with a sniper rifle. After a small argument and some persuasion, she got Isabell and George to agree to let her go with us. I told them that we would make sure she returns safe after I saw that they were extremely worried.
As I saw the Mister Gutsy fly north, I looked over at the rest of us preparing for battle. Everyone was was getting ready for combat, grabbing weapons, checking ammo and medical supplies, and putting on armor. I myself put on my CTM helmet, a kevlar vest, a combat rifle with four magazines, a desert eagle with two magazines, two combat knives, a fragmentation grenade, a walkie talkie radio, and a small medical kit consisting of two stimpacks, a shot of Med-X, some bandages, and some disinfectant. I also grabbed a red dot sight and attached it to my combat rifle, giving myself better accuracy with the gun.
Within 8 minutes we were all ready to move out, and a few minutes later we started up the road, heading toward the northern farms. We had the two jeeps at the front and end of the convoy, each one with two people, a gunner and driver. The gunners were John and Chris, and the drivers were Lizzy and Roy. The rest of us were in the truck in the middle, with John driving. There was little talk as we drove toward the farms.
About half way there, Lisa gasps and motions for me to come over to her. When I do I see why she gasped. She had my laptop to provide a camera feed to the Gutsy, and it looked like it just arrived to the farms, or what was left of them. The gutsy was positioned on a small hill overlooking about six spaced out farms, which were the closest ones to Republic. We could see that four of the barns were overrun and in ruins, while a fifth one was on fire, sending up the stream of black smoke that let us know of the attack. What got our attention though was the fight that was happening at the sixth, and closest, farm. There, what we could guess were raiders were attacking the farm, trying to get to it. However, there were a lot of people in the farm, and combined with some of the remaining perimeter turrets, they were keeping the raiders back for now. After seeing this, I radioed to the other cars what was happening, as well as a plan that was now developing.
Outside of Pearson family farm
"What the bloody hell is taking so long!?" Exclaimed the furious raider leader. "We were supposed to have taken them down by now!"
The other few raiders present looked at each other before one of them mustered enough courage to speak. "We don't know sir, they're just mowin down our men." The leader looked at this raider, then at the others before saying, then get the job done, bring up the shredder." He said, stomping away.
'Why couldn't this be easy' he thought, shaking his head. The attack on the other five farms had worked pretty well, they managed to loot the places, kill some of the people, and gain strength. However, this one farm seemed to hold out against us. The other attacks had only cost two raiders, while this one was already at a dozen. "Bro's gonna be mad about this, but at least we'll take the farm." the leader said, as he saw the shredder being driven over. The gang only had a few vehicles, a couple of rusted up motorcycles and this.
The shredder was the crown jewel of the gang, as it was like a tank. It was a pickup truck that had a plow at the front, as well as armor plating all along the sides and front, and bulletproof glass to protect the driver. But the best thing about it was it's armament, a minigun on the back, with a steel shield cover to protect the gunner. It was one of the greatest things that the gang ever owned, and the leader loved it like a son.
So he was quite shocked to see it burst into flames in a fiery explosion.
He couldn't move for a few moments, but when he did, he was angry. "Who the hell did that!" He yelled, turning toward the farm. But before he fully faced it, he caught a glimpse of movement. Looking toward it, he was shocked to see a group of people pouring over the nearby hill firing carbines and combat rifles at the raiders as they went down the hill. At the crest, he could see two jeeps firing machine guns, tearing groups of raiders into pieces.
He started to turn to run away, but a bullet from the farm sliced through his chest, taking him down. As he layed on the ground holding his wound, he looked up and saw a figure standing over him. The man had short black hair and was about five feet and a half feet tall. He had a vault suit on, along with a weird helmet, a pipboy, and several pieces of armor. As he stood there, the man lifted his pistol up, and the last thing the raider warband leader saw was a flash of light.
Pearson family farm
(Billy's pov)
I walked away from the dead raider leader, towards where my friends were gathering around. I looked over everyone, and apart from a graze on Chris's left arm, everyone was unharmed on our side. Looking over, I could see people starting to come out of the farmhouse and barns, lowering their weapons but still wary of us. However, most of that went away when they saw that Elza was with us.
After some talking with the farmers, we saw that while the majority of the farmers survived the attack, most were now displaced. While a couple of families decided to rebuild their farms, most didn't know what to do. But then, Chris suggested something. "Hey, why don't you come with us back to Republic, we could use the extra people." While a few of them declined, most of those not settling back down there came with us. While most of them were farmers and their families, there were a few other people. There were three people that identified themselves as former guards at Malo, managing to escape from it when the slavers attacked. Another person was actually a member of the followers. She had come from the outpost to check on some of the people here when the farms were attacked. She asked if she could get a ride down back to the hospital since her motorcycle was destroyed, and we agreed. Finally, there was an older man. He was about fifty years old and had a scar running down the left side of his face, likely from a knife. After a bit of reluctance, the man identified himself as a former member of the NCR's first recon unit, which was apparently special forces. He was armed with a powerful sniper rifle, equipped with a powerful scope that had night vision and thermal options, as well as a bipod and laser pointer.
After some looting and counting, we found the total cost and loot numbers of the battle. About 7 farmers and 32 raiders had been killed, with another 4 farmers wounded. About 20 farmers decided to stay behind, while 25 decided to come with us, including 3 of the wounded. Besides some bottle caps and an occasional stimpack, grenade, or good weapon, most of the gear was useless, so we let the farmers staying behind divide up the rest. We sent Roy back in one of the jeeps to bring the other truck and ask George to use his own to help transport people and supplies.
8 hours later
We had finally finished transporting everyone and their supplies and belongings over to the hospital and help them set in. Beth had just returned from returning the follower worker, Ammy, to the follower's outpost and from bringing Elza back to her farm. They thanked her and said that they would send someone over in a few days to discuss some sort of alliance. During this, me and a few of the others, along with some vengeful farmers, attacked the raider's home base. Luckily most of them died in the farm attack, so all that were left were a handful of poorly prepared raiders and an angry leader, who had apparently lost his brother in the attack.
When we got back, bringing with us the loot from the camp, we quickly organized a small militia to defend the hospital and provide security. The militia had about ten people, including Max, Roy, the former 1st recon member Richard, the 3 Malo security guards, and four farmers who didn't have anything else to do. Max and Richard will be training the new militia members for the next couple days, teaching them proper gun usage and management, physical endurance, hand to hand combat, and basic tactical skills.
Meanwhile, we have brought the hospital security online, started repairs on the the outer wall, added a metal gate at the entrance, and have even taken the two protectrons from the sheriff's office and reprogrammed them to help with security. Soon, we'll create a few guard towers along the soon to be finished walls, add some turrets, and set up a sniper post on the hospital roof for Richard. He and everyone who's joined us has been staying in the hospital rooms. After some thinking, we've decided to have floors 3 to 7 be used for residential purposes.
Thinking about all we have already accomplished within a few days, it makes me feel like we could do anything if we work towards it. Of course, we still had many more tasks to do. We had to relocate all of the town's resources to either the hospital or one of the nearby warehouses. We needed to gain more members, create a stable supply of food and water, and get in contact with some trading caravans. We needed to secure the rest of the town, gain more strength, and soon take the war to the slavers once an army has been built.
I started walking around the hospital, taking notes on things that could be improved on or new ideas entirely. As I was walking around, I looked outside the hospital compound. Across the street were several empty and looted shops and stores, along with trash littering the ground, a broken window or two, and an occasional rusted out car. However, as I was about to step back into the compound, I noticed something in an alleyway between a pawnshop and a clothes store. When I looked closer I saw it was a skeleton. Skeletons like these were common around here, and there were even a couple of others nearby. But what got my interest was that the skeleton was wearing a military uniform, and it didn't look like it belonged to an regular soldier either.
I quickly hopped the wall before jogging over to the skeleton, making a mental note to put barbed wire on top of the walls. I went over to the skeleton, and looking closer I could see that it was an officer. 'What was a uniformed officer like him doing here?' I thought to myself as I checked him. I decided to see if there was anything interesting on him. After looting the skeleton, I found a holotape, a 'high clearance' passcard, and a small gun case. Opening the case, I found a well preserved and highly modified desert eagle pistol called 'Night breaker', alone with 5 magazines for it. After staring at it in aw for a moment, I shut the case, grabbed it, the passcard, and the holotape, and returned to the hospital.
I quickly went to my room, locking my door so I wouldn't be disturbed. I quickly looked around my room, which was a simple bed, mirror, a couple of cabinets, and a desk with a chair. Placing the objects on my desk, I took the holotape and put it in my pipboy, activating the ancient message on it.
"U.S Army Personal log #23
October 24, 2077
Republic, Washington
Colonel Jason Quint
The nukes weren't the only thing that fell. A missile hit at 1100 hours, landing just to the north of town. An hour after it fell, people started *cough cough* dying on the streets, and we realized that it was a chemical weapon. I sealed the bunker, but by then whatever was in that missile had already gotten in. Everyone's...dead. I waited the night out in a small safe room. I myself got infected, but not as much as th- *cough* the others. The only good thing is that the virus has dissipated and is now gone, letting me leave without further infection. I've *cough* sealed the bunker, although I didn't get a chance to activate any of its defenses except for a couple of protectrons at the entrance. I'm going to try to *cough* get to the nearby hospital. Maybe there's a medication there that cou- *hacking cough for a minute or so* oh no, that's blood. I *cough* better hurry before I'm dead. This is Colo- *cough* Colonel Jason Quint, signing off."
The message ended, leaving me in a swirling pool of thoughts and emotions. After a few minutes I managed to sort myself out and looked out the window, seeing the final rays of the sun as it was almost below the horizon. As I did, I looked slightly down at the town. 'Somewhere out there is a military bunker...' I thought '...and we're going to find it!'.