They continued walking for a few hours, As they got closer to the city a custom metal sign came into view pointing the way forward giving directions to Midway. Naper didn't have anything like that.
However while walking down the road that Salvatore was bringing them on, he heard something and shoved Adam and himself behind the cover of some rubble of a collapsed building. Salvatore put a finger to his lips to indicate silence and then poked his head up over the rubble slightly to look. Adam stayed down but he listened intently, what he heard did not inspire him with confidence. Voices. Loud recognizable voices. Super mutants. No longer able to contain either his curiosity or his survival instinct he too peaked a bit out from the cover of the rubble.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" One of the super mutants laughed boisterously as he held a woman up by her long hair, dangling her off the ground while she screamed in pain and pleaded for mercy. Another one was throwing a man into a dog cage, the cage was far too small for him, he had to curl up into a ball to fit. A third man was ripped apart by a third super mutant, like pulling the legs off a chicken. Which is exactly what he did. Ripping the still alive man's leg clean off, letting blood spurt everywhere as he began to tear into it with his teeth, enjoying it like it was a leg of lamb. Clothes and all.
"Fuck."Salvatore said quietly as he watched the spectacle before him. "Course it had to be muties." He grumbled.
"What's the plan?" Adam asked Salvatore. He had his own ideas at the moment, but Salvatore had experience as well as knew the path to Midway, so he was willing to defer to his judgement.
"We can't go around them."Salvatore said as he lightly gestured to the buildings flanking them at the moment. "There's no path through the sides of buildings, this street is locked down, we could turn around but the detour would take at least a few hours, we might not arrive before nightfall if we do." Salvatore sighed.
"What about going through them?" Adam asked as he formulated his own strategy.
"Are you crazy? Those are super mutants! They soak up rounds like they are made of armor."
"Yeah, but there are only three of them, and we have the drop on them." Adam looked around and then pointed to the roof of a building that looked accessible nearby. "If we get up there, fire from above and then force them to chase us upstairs we can focus fire on them."
"Thats…" Salvatore looked at the roof and then the super mutants. "Still a pretty bad idea." He said after a moment.
"It could work." Adam insisted.let you die in some stupid plan" Adam said nothing as he watched the one super mutant torment the woman who was a blubbering mess and the other two minding their business. The man who got his leg ripped off now had his arm ripped off, he was certainly dead now, or if not dead, he was soon to be.
Salvatore sighed and then pulled off the backpack Adam had given him and looked inside.
"Alright fine, we can do this, but if it looks bad we are going to run, no complaints, got it?" He said with authority to Adam. Adam grinned.
"Alright, deal."
The next few minutes were spent sneaking past the Super Mutants line of sight, getting into the building, which was a laundromat apartment mix almost entirely gutted by now, as they made their way to the roof. It wasn't that high up, just the third floor, but enough to get easy firing lines on the mutants. Once Adam had set himself up, Salvatore took out a claymore from his bag, placing it facing the doorway leading to the roof. Adam was shocked to see Salvatore had brought heavy explosives with him on this trip but didn't question it.
"Alright kid, we are as ready as we can be. You sure you want to do this? It might be dangerous to travel at night but it would be better than to engage super mutants." Adam sat in silence for a moment as he watched the people get terrorized before he sighed.
"Yeah, if not those people will die without our intervention." Salvatore looked at him like he was crazy.
"You are doing this for some randos you don't know? Damn, I can't believe my employer is such a bleeding heart." He sighed and then nodded. "Alright let's do this then, just be ready for them to charge, and don't stop firing until we can't see them." It was Adam's turn to nod. He pulled out his hunting rifle and then charged the bolt, ready to fire, taking aim at one of the super Mutant's heads.
"Fire when you are ready." Salvatore said as he took aim too.
Moments later the Super Mutants, who were enjoying their meal and toys of fresh humans in the middle of the street were suddenly met with a hail of fire.
The one holding and tormenting the woman was hit right in the temple from Adam's rifle, he dropped the woman and hit the ground hard. The other two reacted quickly. One grabbed a hunting rifle of his own and fired back at the building where Adam and Salvatore was but at the wrong floor, the other grabbed a sledge hammer that was on the ground next to him and started to run towards the building.
"HUMIES DIE NOW!" He yelled as he charged. Salvatore threw lead down range, hitting his chest over and over with 5.56 rounds which did seem to injure the massive mutant man but not enough to stop him. The one with the hunting rifle fired a shot right past Adam and then started charging the building as well. Adam was about to line up another shot but then saw the first Mutant, the one who he had hit right in the head, slowly getting up. His head was clearly broken, splayed open like… a bullet had collided with it, but he was still moving, though slowly.
Adam took no chances, he changed targets to the one he had hit previously and fired again, hitting him right in the throat.
With a choking motion he grabbed his throat as blood poured out, he fell to his knees and then fell over, likely dead.
Meanwhile Salvatore had been throwing shot after shot at the two mutants who were on their way inside, both had made it inside the building before he could stop them, but injured them enough.
"They are coming up, kid." Salvatore said as he spun around with his rifle, and crouched onto one knee while aiming at Head height at the door that he knew would eventually be opened. Adam did much the same, though he reslung his rifle and pulled out his laser pistol, readying it for close combat.
There were a tense few moments as the men waited for the inevitable confrontation. Then they heard them, screaming, yelling, cursing as they made their way up the final set of stairs, until…
Boom
The claymore went off right as the first super mutant got up the stairs. He reeled back, obviously very hurt by the attack, the one behind him pushed past, brandishing his sledgehammer and charged at Salvatore. Salvatore got a few rounds into him before he got close but the Super Mutant still had the strength to swing his hammer down hard, Luckily Salvatore was able to dodge in time, the bricks of the building where the sledge hammer hit immediately crumbled, the force of the swing enough to do serious demolition on the structure, but not enough to bring the building down.
Meanwhile Adam was dealing with the other one. After the one with the sledgehammer brushed past, Adam began to lay down fire at the Super mutant who had taken a face full of claymore. One shot, two shots, three, four, five. He didn't let up the trigger until he saw the brute fall face first through the cloud of dust the claymore had kicked up onto the floor of the roof, dead.
Adam whipped around pointing his pistol at the super mutant who was accosting Salvatore only to see the mutant dead too, half slumped over the edge of the building, Salvatore's boot on his neck.
"You alright?' Adam asked as he looked Salvatore over, seeing no obvious injuries.
"Yeah, I'm fine kid. Lucky the idiot never played baseball." He laughed darkly to himself as he used his boot to push the super mutant off the roof of the building. The body landed on the ground a moment later with a satisfying thump.
"Fuck these mutants." He said as he spit down over the roof to the body below. "Road's used to be safe before the horsemen moved in."
He grumbled.
"What do the horsemen have to do with this? Are there super mutants working for War?" Adam asked as he caught his breath and calmed down from the intense situation.
"No, of course not." Salvatore said like Adam was asking something stupid. He then paused and seemed contemplative. "Well, actually, I don't know, but probably not, the point is that it's just a side effect."
"Care to elaborate?" Salvatore looked at the door to the stairway and motioned with his head. "Sure, but let's get off the roof, no sense staying here now." Adam followed as Salvatore led, speaking a moment later.
"I told you before I don't know too much about the Horsemen, that is still true, obviously. But what I do know is that each one of them is currently surrounding Chicago, effectively boxing it in. War to the NorthWest, Pestilence to the East, and Famine to the South. Getting in and out of the area is incredibly difficult nowadays, though not impossible." He paused.
"The thing is with these massive forces growing they are pushing other creatures and people inwards, super mutants used to stay further out but they are encroaching on trading lanes because they are threatened by the forces. Same with other creatures with the wherewithal to get out of the way." He sighed. "All it means is shit like this is slowly becoming more common, meanwhile less and less outside traders are making their way into the area." They came to the bottom floor and Salvatore stopped at the body of the Super mutant he killed.
"Of course there's still the Lake to the north, people can still come and go that way, but I heard even the Pier is having some troubles right now. So, far as I'm aware, people here are stuck here until the situation is resolved. And trust me, this isn't going to go away or be resolved soon." Adam listened intently as Salvatore spoke. Thinking over his words. After a moment he understood the subtext of what Salvatore was saying.
"You think a war is coming." Adam said with realization as he stood next to Salvatore. Salvatore turned to look at him surprised that Adam had figured it out but nodded.
"Right. Sooner or later this area is going to become a warzone, just don't know when, but it will happen, mark my words." He sighed and then started leading the way again, over to the small area where the super mutants had encamped themselves before. "I think we still got some time though, even if I'm not paying attention to the goings on I could tell if it was about to pop off, I got a sixth sense for that sort of thing. Just my intuition though." He finished as they stopped at the woman who was being tormented by the Super mutant, crying her eyes out and the man who was still trapped in the small cage.
"Alright, let's help these poor saps out."Salvatore said dismissively as he moved to let the man out of the cage, while Adam moved to comfort the woman.