DAY 17, November 8th

7:27 AM: Slept eight hours and awoke groggy. I'm going to see if I can maybe grab another hour or two of sleep...

9:28 AM: So I slept some more but still feel tired, I'll have to worry about it later. Had a quick breakfast of another mutt chop, half a gord and some Sugar Bombs. As I finished my meal Dogmeat was howling at a locked security gate just beyond the room I slept in and through the mesh walls I could see two first aid kits, metal shelves, and a skeleton in a wheelchair among some interesting looking crates. Before going to investigate I called him over and took everything, except my laser musket, a short double-barreled shotgun, and the ammo from him (left his bandanna and goggles) and stashed it in an old dresser next to the bed I slept in. Also stashed the Nuka-Colas and heavier junk I had been holding onto...Ill be back for it all later. Now that's our weight situation is under control I'm going to turn my attention to this door.

11:16 AM: It took two bobby pins but I got into the secured room. Not as much there as I would've liked but I did get some Wonderglue, three stim packs, a RadAway and another purified water. Exploring the nursing home further I found it to be as depressing as Nora and I had imagined it would've been, even more so decaying and abandoned. Not surprisingly, there's signs that someone has squatted here in the past. The room that the locked room seemed to be a greenhouse with a gourd planter from which I gathered another gourd. There was a Jangles the Moon Monkey doll in one of the empty bedrooms along with a Nuka-Cola truck and a toy car. To my surprise in the curio of the room were two power relay coils which I snatched up. When I left that room I looked through a gaping hole in the north wall out into blue sky.  In the distance beyond the ruined elevate highway I could see that satellite dish that I had encountered days ago. Taking a breath I turned my attention back to the remaining rooms: Some jet, a clean gray suit, and a Nuka-Cola Quantum was all I found. As I was turning to leave the living room area I saw what appeared to be a hand made magazine sitting on a stereo cabinet next to a lamp. Picking it up I read the title: "Tales of a Junk Town Jerky Vendor". It had a crudely drawn pack brahman on the cover and the title of this issue seem to be "Take your business on the road". Flipping through it I saw several hand written articles pertaining to the art of bartering and trade in this world. I feel like I can probably make use of this, and have been wanting something new to read, so I stowed it in my pack.

Heading back down the hallway with the gaping hole in the wall I noticed a blue door that I had missed earlier with a sign above stating: "Restricted Area". The lock was pretty advanced but after only one broken bobby pin I was able to pick it. Inside I saw what looked like an empty storage room with a staircase defending and turning back on itself as it went down.  Gun drawn I slowly descended down to the building's generator room. For my curiosity I scored myself another fusion core! 

With nothing more found after searching here I'm going to start heading back into the city to scout out my target. I’m going to stash what I found in the room with my other stuff, even the core. I need it, but can't afford the weight right now. 

12:01 PM: I made sure the core was hidden under everything else in the dresser then headed out to the front reception area to continue towards my goal. The clock on the wall here also says 9:48, I think that number might stick in my head forever...

12:15 PM: Leaving Mystic Pines we slowly headed south down the street, past the raider base that we had taken out last night. Continuing by what looked like a heavy machinery storage yard we continued down the street, above us the interstate stretched high in the sky. Just as I was looking up at it we overheard gunshots coming from an apartment block across the street to my right, out of my view. I waited with Dogmeat behind me around the corner of a building I was near until the shots stopped, then advanced slowly. Going up a short stair I peered around the corner into what was the communal pool area of the complex. Across the way, on the other side of the pool, I saw two ghouls hunched down picking at something on the ground. They had the same wild look about them that the ones I encountered yesterday had, so I slowly drew the pipe rifle and took aim. One shot for the one on the left, three for the right. With the ghouls down I made my way forward slowly, reloading the pipe rifle as I went in crouched and quiet in case there were more. I found myself at the edge of the apartment's pool, full of the most putrid smelling irradiated water I've seen so far. Across the way was a cookpot two sleeping bags and just beyond were their former owners. Looks like a pack of ghouls took some raiders camped here by surprise and I picked off the few survivors. Took all the rounds and bottle caps I found on the raiders (one had fallen in the pool but thankfully the shallow end) as well as any useful junk off of the ghouls, but left their armor behind. Looks like they had a pretty decent firefight based on the bullet holes in the walls, and the bodies. As we were about to head out I noticed a wooden box with a fragmentation grenade, two Molotov cocktails, and a fragmentation mine inside! Took them all. These could save my life.

With my waypoint directly ahead of me I decided to cross through the bottom of the apartment complex and push on towards the Plant again.

12:35 PM: Just as I was leaving the apartments there was another one of those damn Polowski preservation shelters, this one surrounded by three skeletons. It looks like they were trying to get inside when it happened. Opening the rusted tube I found a skeleton in army fatigues gripping...a mini nuke! Why on Earth he had it and decided to keep it with him in the preservation station is beyond me, but here it is.  Even though the thing must weigh over 10 pounds I can't just leave it here. I'll strap it on Dogmeat's back if I have to, but this thing is coming home with us!

12:53 PM: As I was making my way through the heart of the city I realized I was on the street leading back towards the Super-Duper Mart. Looking up at the Nuka-Cola sign hanging on a walkway between two buildings several stories above I saw to raiders just standing there, unaware of my presence. It appeared one of them was wearing some sort of bulky suit while the other was dressed in similar fashion to the others I had encountered.  I decided to take advantage of my unseen position and open fire on them but after I backed up a couple dozen paces down the street, trying get a better angle, I thought better of it. I can't go around just shooting every single "bad guy" that I see, I have a mission, and I need to focus on that.

I quietly slipped through the intersection, hurrying as I heard one of them saying he thought he heard something. With my heart racing I made my way across to street to a chain-link fence with a gate between two buildings. Opening it I slipped through, closed it behind me, and climbed a dozen cement stairs at the back of some building. Slamming my back against the blue metal wall and clutching the rifle to my chest I opened my eyes and saw the Corvega Plant looming in front of me.

I have a view of what appears to be the left rear part of the Plant. I'm trying to scout it but the sun is in my eyes right now and Dogmeat has my laser musket. Despite that I think I saw a raider at the very top of structure in front of me, at least a hundred feet up, but I can't be sure. The sky has suddenly gone foggy as thunder booms in the distance and the rad meter in my Pip-Boy is going off.  Another rad storm. I'm moving in for a closer look.

1:02 PM: Swapped out the automatic pipe rifle for my laser musket from Dogmeat, only have seven more shots but I need that scope. As I was trading my inventory with him I noticed that we were near a large broken pipe of some sort with another one of those sun like chalk symbols on the inner wall. Regardless of any sort of markings the pipe seem to be heading towards my way point and was big enough for me to stand upright in. I entered hoping to maybe have a rear access to my goal with cover from the rad storm raging above us.

My instincts were right, this pipe leads right into the Plant! I'm now standing in a large round tube with water in it, just up to my ankles, and I can see that it twists up and to the right out of my view ahead. I hope my luck holds out, this could be just the break I need against what appears to be a vastly out numbering enemy.

2:49 PM: As I scrambled up the incline pipe, trying my best not to slide backwards, I saw the tunnel stretch forward as it leveled out and at the end were two ghouls. Having not seen me I shot and killed one with a blast from the musket in the back.  I went to fire again and noticed the other one appeared to already be dead. Sending Dogmeat ahead to scout he came back with a squeaky toy alien from one of the ghouls, but nothing else hostile made itself known. 

Moving forward slowly I took some bottle caps off the dead ghouls then realized what happened. There was another machine gun turret in a room accessible through a removed panel of the pipe and a broken wall behind it. Before it could open fire on us I stepped into the opening and nailed it with two shots before it exploded. As we crept into the water flooded room I could hear someone talking and there was one of those can chime traps hanging right next two a sandbag bunker which had been built around the turret.  I disarmed it and began to take stock of the room that we were in, but as I was about to lower my guard I heard someone say, "what the fuck was that?" from down a long hall leading into the heart of the plant. They were more of them but they didn’t know about me.  Looking down the hallway through the musket's scope all I could make out was a long stretch of pipes and cement with three more of the can traps hanging from the ceiling. After a few minutes the voices moved further away and I decided it was safe to check the room we were in. 

It was a simple underground room with two exits: the long hallway into the plant and the hole in the wall back to the pipe from where I came.  In one corner was an large bo-like structure with one side open, a small control room of sorts, and in it was a dead raider. Searching quickly he had .305 rounds, a pipe bolt-action pistol, Knuckles, and armor. I took the rounds and left the rest. On a shelf behind him was a box with Jet and Medex, and an ammo box with a simple enough lock (that still took two Bobby pins) which had eighteen fusion cells and eight shotgun shells inside. Thank God, This old musket's scope gives me the edge I need but without ammo it’s basically just dead weight. Heh, “The Edge", maybe I'll name her that if I get out of this?  I also found a toolbox with a tin of Mentats, Wonderglue, and a scalpel, all which went in my bag.

Heading back towards the hallway to check on the other raiders I heard I stopped to sift though the turret’s remains. Was able to salvage some 5.56 rounds, a biometric scanner like the ones I used in the service, and an enhanced targeting card. Even though the stuff was starting to weigh me down I couldn’t just leave these resources behind. Taking a few minutes I searched the three dead ghouls and came up with some military grade duct tape, some more caps, and a pack of cigarettes. Too bad I gave up smoking a few hundred years ago and that they were covered in ghoul…fluids. I could use one right now, might give in if I don’t find a silver lining soon. Feeling thirsty and seeing I only had two waters left I ventured a sip of the still water that had flooded the floor and grimaced at the slick oily taste. Heading back to the control room I noticed that near the dead raider was a terminal so I went ahead and activated it.

Apparently it was owned by a "Lonnie" and contained a journal of sorts detailing the exploits of the raider gang I was hunting. It talked about how Lexington was "there's" after wiping out a ghoul swarm without losing anyone and someone named Jared was setting them up in a big car factory. There was another journal entry about apartments that they found while sweeping through the town and how Gristle (The same raider that I'd kill back in Concord I assume...how many Gristles can there be?) took some teams to flush out ghoul stragglers. Apparently this Lonnie had an eye on a nice apartment with a good view that he wanted to have. Another entry about asking Jarod for another turret down here, looks like he didn't get it, which is a good thing for me. This Lonnie person was obviously aware of the security breach they had in the pipe that I used, to bad his boss didn’t listen. 

There was another entry about Gristle almost getting them all killed down here by drinking with his guys and making enough noise to draw more ghoul attention. Despite being drunk they were able to shoot straight and hold them off. The final entry was Lonnie complaining that they never got the second turret and that Jared needs to get his head out of his ass. Apparently he was pouring caps into some "sight" thing...like Mama Murphy does?  The last line of the entry says he's going to speak to Jared and make him see reason despite Gristle warning him it will only make him angry. So now I know Jarod is the boss here, and the man I need to take down.

As I stepped away from the terminal I looked down as the dead raider I now knew to be Lonnie. Seems like he was a smart guy...too bad his fellow raiders weren't. Looks like his fear of the ghouls manifested finally, hopefully it was quick.  I'm now much more knowledgable about my situation. 

We are going to make our way down the hall, I’ll need to disarm the can traps as we go to avoid detection. First though I need to eat, maybe a gourd and these snack cakes?

5:30 PM: The hallway stretch several hundred feet and cranked up “Edge” as I went  slowly, disarming the traps one by one. With 21 shots I felt better with her in my hands then the old rifle, despite the limited rate of fire. At the end was a cement stair which turned to the right at the top.  From there was a shorter hallway ending at a door to the left and another long hallway branching off to the right, doubling back the direction I came from. At the end of that one I saw a raider sitting at a desk a few hundred feet away, unaware I was watching him. I decided to take the chance at shooting him from my vantage point and with one shot and he disintegrated in his chair before he even knew he was dead. I back around the corner and down the stairs to await any reinforcements, which was a good thing as a gruff sounding female voice shouted: "When you turn up, your dead.” from the direction of the man I shot. Retreating further back down to the lower hallwayI put The Edge's site to my eye and waited. 

The first one came around the corner with what looked like a pipe pistol, he fell taking a blast to the chest. The woman continued to taunt me somewhere up above, but I held my position. A few minutes later she came next but wisely leaned around the corner unlike her compatriot, which blocked me from getting a clean shot. After missing with my second round I backpedaled some more while cranking The Edge up and blasted two more times missing while she was rushing me and firing off shots of her own.  With bullets hitting the narrow cement walls around me I threw a Molotov at her, its glass shattering on her chest as she dropped her gun ash tried to roll in the shallow trickle of water on the ground, screaming.  It was done.

Continuing to hang back in the hall I heard what sounded like a gunshot and then an explosion rocked the hallway sending bits of concrete splashing in the water at my feet followed by dust. After waiting a few more minutes, still squinting through my scope, I slowly made my way up the hallway again stopping at the women’s blackened corpse. She had eight rounds of .38 ammo and a modified gas mask with goggles which I pealed from her still smoking face, leaving the rest of her gear. The rest of her body looked like a barbecue gone wrong, but the mask had protected her face which was still rosy, almost alive.  Her dead eyes stared at me and I thought to myself she might have been pretty if she had been born into someplace other then this nightmare of a world.  Pushing on the man who I shot at the top of the stairs had rolled halfway down and only had some .38 rounds and a stimpak that was worth taking.

At the top of the stairs I slowly peeked around the corner, the smaller hallway before me clear and the longer one to my right the same. Despite this, I know these three are only a small fraction the raiders hold up in here.  I have to go slow and quiet, I've kicked the hornets nest...

4:10 PM: I sent Dogmeat to inspect the ashes of the first raider who had been sitting at the desk down the long hall. No one came out as he went and he returned with not one, but two short double-barreled shotguns. I decided to hold onto them for now since he brought them to me, but I'll ditch them once things get too heavy.

After several more minutes of watching it appeared both ways were clear. Deciding it would be safer to inspect the shorter hall first since I could get back to the stairs quicker, I decided to move forward after quickly downing a cold mutt chop and some bites of a gourd. 

There was a blue door in the left wall and I opened it slowly as we both stayed crouched. It opened to a large room with pipes and fences. Someone saying "What the hell was that?" as I sent Dogmeat charging in alerted me to their presence and it escalated quickly from there. 

First I disintegrated one that was shooting at Dogmeat who was rushing into the room as I held my ground in the open doorway. Out of my sight to the left I could her a turret dispensing an endless supply of flying death and the blood, screams, and gunfire merged into a twisted blur of white noise. Another man rushed me through the open door wielding a tire iron and I managed to get my musket cranked up just in time to blast him as he fell in a heap on top of me. I scrambled backwards kicking the door shut as I went. 

Pulling back into the stairway I counted my rounds: twenty-six more 10mm, eight fusion shells. Putting away The Edge I reloaded Nora as I prepared to push forward and retrieve Dogmeat who was still in there.  I stuck myself with a Rad Away, tucking the sack connected to the tubing in my belt, and downed a water with a dry snack cake and silt beans in my mouth..best I could do in the middle of a cat and mouse firefight. 

Just as I had finished my self triage I heard them: "Musta ran away...we're fine." but the sentiment was not shared. I listened to two men argue about staying on guard, the first one should have listened to his friend's warning that someone might be sneaking up on them. They appeared right in front of me while I hid in the shadows, the first one to his right and headed towards the blue door which I had closed. Before they could notice the dead bodies in the hallway ahead of them I shot twice at the back of his head with Nora taking most of his skull off. His partner managed to graze me with a bullet before I took him down as well. Jesus! That was too close.  I've backed down the stairs again to catch my breath before going back in. I can't leave Dogmeat behind... 

6:34 PM: Taking a breath and reloading Nora I returned up the stairs and to the blue door, the two dead men I just killed sprawled on the floor before it. I opened the door and saw a female raider through the chain-link fence to my left and Dogmeat on the ground next to her. My heart stopped, I couldn't tell if he was dead or not. When I moved forward she saw me and opened fire, backed up by the turret. Moving back into the hallway I attempted to lure her out with a shot at the metal door, but she didn't take the bait. Going back in I shot of a few more rounds at some tanks hoping they would explode, but my bullets couldn't penetrate their skin. With little other choice I ran in and fired off one more shot, a lucky one that hit her in the back of the head sending her down. Pressing my advantage I injected a stem in my thigh and ran forward throwing my only frag grenade at the turret. It flew through the air in what seemed like a slow-motion arc landing with a rattle right under the legs of the machine. A second later and exploded and the room was secured.

Not taking any chances I moved cautiously towards my companion.  A wimpier let me know he was still alive and I let him know he was a good boy as I used a stimpak on him. He was back up quickly, wagging his tail and licking me, then I turned to survey the room we were now in. 

6:53 PM: Not more then a few minutes after we started to survey the room two ghouls squeezed through an opening in the floor near what looked like a giant press, some sort of manufacturing machinery. Dogmeat barked a warning and I immediacy opened fire with Nora. In the process I hit something explosive and this time they went up, filling the room with the deafening explosion of fire sending one of the ghouls flying. When it was over I had only one more bullet left and Nora, but both of them were dead and we were standing.

Seven...I killed seven people in those halls and this room. I know, I had to or they would have killed me, and I’ve killed many more then that in Concord and other places but it feels different this time, more intimate. I dunno...

8:37 PM: After taking all the ammo and caps from the dead, and another bio scanner and vacuum tube from the turret's shell, I searched the rest of the room. There had been no more further sign of raiders or ghouls, and I felt that I had at least clear this area. It was getting late anyway and I had to consider retreating for the evening and pushing forward again tomorrow.

In the room near where the explosion happened there was an another open container of sorts like Lonnie’s control room, large enough for me to walk in and with what looked like a still on top. Inside were several silver canisters labeled “Caution" and an open fridge full of human bones. Pushing the questions around the appliance out of my mind I grabbed a couple gas canisters that were on the ground, a hotplate, two empty milk bottles, and an enamel bucket. Figured I could stash them back at the nursing home. Just as I was about to turn around and make for the hallway I spotted a duffel bag sitting on a box of some sort behind some insulated tubing to the right of the open container. Inside were 12 fusion cells, some .45 rounds, and a short pipe revolver rifle. I took the ammo and left the rifle. I was tired, thirsty, and exhausted. Pushing forward now would be suicide, so I decided to retreat back to that apartment block under the cover of nights and make camp at the sleeping bags. With that as our plan we headed back into the small hallway and then down the stairs into the flooded room by the pipe.

Not stopping we went through the room and into the large pipe, almost slipping down the steep decline that twisted left, and then exiting into the cool evening air. The sky is clear with only a few clouds, the sun is just setting. With any luck will get back to the apartment block without any trouble.

9:31 PM: Made it back to the pool at the apartments and made my was into the cleaner of the two sleeping bags. I'm overly tired but I forced myself to eat two ears of corn, my last silt bean, and the old sweet roll that I found at Slocum Joe's. Also drank my last two clean waters before dragging the corpses that were within sight of the sleeping bags into the pool so I wouldn't have to look at them when I woke up. It's dangerous and I'm exposed, but I have Dogmeat with me so with any luck I'll be able to get some sleep and then decide what next plan of action will be tomorrow.