Predictably, the raiders reacted to the explosion by pouring out of their buildings to see what was going on. By some unspoken chance, all of us held our fire for just a few breaths, waiting until more of them were attempting to extinguish the fire before we started picking them off, three or four of them falling in each wave.

  At this range, our rifles performed brilliantly, and although my skill with the weapon was below that of my soldiers, I was learning quickly. As such, more of my shots hit than missed, and together we dropped nearly a dozen raiders in just a handful of seconds.

  It was around then that they seemed to recognize the vague direction that the fire was coming from. For the smart ones, that meant taking cover, putting as much solid material between us and them as they could. Fortunately for us, even with their larger numbers, the amount of intelligent raiders could be counted on our fingers, with enough left over to still pull our triggers. Nearly a dozen and a half of the raiders attempted to charge our location, almost all of them dropping as they tried to scale the walls on their side. Those armed with firearms fired at the building, but it was clear they couldn't quite figure out where we were, as the windows below us cracked and shattered under their fire.

  Only a short burst of bullets, shot from a, got close, shattering the window to the left of mine.

  Once the first rush was slaughtered, because there was really only one word for it, the flow slowed to a trickle, with a handful more raiders coming out or popping out of cover, under some delusion that their attempt to kill us would be different. As if the dozens of corpses around them weren't enough of a hint of how that would go.

  This staggered release of two or three targets continued for nearly an hour before it suddenly seemed to come to a halt. For the next while we waited, watching, wondering where the next target would pop out from.

  After a good chunk of time, just around when I was beginning to consider moving in to clear all of the buildings floor by floor, I saw a glint of something out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly, before I could warn anyone, my window shattered, and a hail of bullets snapped into my armor, two managing to punch through my shoulder and bicep.

  A choked coughing sound was all I managed to get out as I fell backward, the three indents on my chest armor having knocked the wind out of me completely. Even as I struggled to breathe, and blood soaked my arm, I managed to drag myself into cover under the window, my rifle dropped to the side. It took a moment, but eventually I was able to gasp and breathe enough to talk again.

  "Leon! Medic!"

  The fire from our side paused for a moment before picking up, while I could hear Leon calling out to me that he was on his way. Bullets now cracked our windows and kicked up dust along the walls behind us.

  "They are on the top floor of the building to our right!" I called out to Joseph and Madison, their rifles going silent for just a moment before opening up again.

  The second Leon was kneeling beside me, he got to work, slicing my uniform open to see what the damage was. He examined he area for a moment, nodding as he did.

  "Okay, two bullet wounds," He said, causing me to hiss in pain as he jostled my arm. "Missed the bone, not arterial. Looks like one went through, and the other is still in you. I either dig it out now or cut it out later."

  "Cut it out later!" I said through clenched teeth. "Preferably after a shot of Med-X!"

  "Fair, okay, here we go."

  Leon quickly used his canteen to splash the wounds clean before pulling out a stimpak and injecting it between the two bullet wounds. Almost instantly, my arm began to itch, first all around my bicep and shoulder, before it all seemed to pull in to the wounds. I resisted the urge to jab and scratch at it, instead watching as my body rapidly healed, the two relatively severe wounds closing before my eyes. After just about thirty seconds, all I was left with was some scraping and a soreness that was prevalent but ignorable.

  "I would tell you to not use it, but I'll be using another stimpak on you when I cut you up later, so have at it," Leon said, giving my arm another look over. "Alright, everything looks okay. If you feel anything tearing, if it goes numb, starts to bruise severely, or stops working, come find me immediately."

  I nodded, taking my rifle as he passed it to me, before watching him leave to find his own cover again. Meanwhile, I took a moment to close my eyes, steel myself, before rising out of cover back to my original position, if not leaning just a bit further into the cover of the window frame.

  I could see that my soldiers had made quick work of the raiders in the slightly lower building, as well as the one across from it. From our higher vantage point, I could see half a dozen broken windows, and through them I could see plenty more corpses. I settled in just in time to fire the last shot, killing a raider with a skull helmet, before the whole area went silent.

  "Careful… keep your eyes on the windows…" I warned, scanning around, looking for any signs of movement.

  We sat there, in the cover of the dark building, for another thirty minutes before finally deciding enough was enough. After one last scan around, we slowly made our way down the first floor.

  When we stepped out of the stairwell and into the entrance area, I was surprised to find that there were several raider corpses, as well as the dogs we had heard.

  "Where the hell did they come from?" I asked, looking over at Carlos, who was standing up out of his cover behind the front desk.

  "The first wave, sir," John answered, Carlos nodding in agreement.

  "Dammit, I thought we did a good job of keeping them back," I admitted with a frown. "Any issues?"

  "No, they dropped pretty easily," Carlos assured me. "We ready to move?"

  "Yeah, time to clear all those buildings," I said, looking around at my men, steadily ignoring the dull ache of my shoulder and bicep. "How is everyone on ammo?"

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "About half dry," Joseph responded, both Leon and Madison nodding as well.

  "Plenty left, sir," Carlos responded. "Ready to go when you are."

  "Then let's head out the side door, recover your trap, and start clearing those buildings," I said, getting a nod from everyone. "Might split up depending on what sort of groupings we have inside."

  We moved out as one, me at the heart of the formation as we crossed the gap between our building and the raider camp. As we rounded the camp, entering through a gap in the wall, we got our first close-up look at the carnage. Dozens of raiders lay dead and bleeding, while one of the wooden and scrap structures was still burning.

  We quickly split up and pushed into two of the buildings, cleaning them room by room. It was tense, nauseating work, as the interiors of the buildings were decorated with blood and corpses, not just the ones we made.

  "What could drive them to do this?" Madison asked softly as we passed a corpse strung up with hooks. "I could at least wrap my mind around the horror if they were eating them or something, but… It's just a decoration."

  "Radiation exposure? Drugs?" I suggested. "There may be some sort of factioning going on, but… they are clearly too twisted to even consider sparing them."

  Madison nodded, and we moved on, clearing a corner office before making our way to the next floor, Leon covering us from the rear. Not long after that, we stumbled into a pair of raiders, high out of their mind, stumbling through the halls. They didn't even seem to know what was happening, but we put them down anyway. I could imagine it would have been more difficult to stomach if the decor hadn't already cut anything even remotely close to empathy for them.

  It took us about two and a half hours to clear the remaining buildings. We went through them room by room, thoroughly searching all four buildings connected by the raider camp. Once we were done, we met up outside, where the fire was mostly out.

  "Okay, let's start by cleaning out these bodies. Weapons, ammo, and anything to do with chems or medical supplies," I explained, getting nods back. "Then let's get the bodies stacked before the fire goes out. We can use the burning structure, the other structure, and some furniture from inside as fuel to burn the bodies. I don't want a Deathclaw nest or worse popping up so close to home. Once we are done out here, we can start clearing inside."

  Looting the entire camp took almost three hours and culminated in a mixed bag of results. We did find a decent amount of drugs, though most of it was recreational. They would still count towards the medbay resources, but not nearly as much as medical drugs. That said, we did find a fair bit of items that would count, including old stimpaks, Med-X, Buffout, Radaway, and Rad-X. The store, one of the buildings connected to the camp, also had a medical supplies section, and while it wasn't in the best shape, there was enough medical junk to fill two duffel bags.

  On top of the drugs, we also found plenty of alcohol, though we didn't bother with the beer, as it wouldn't sell for very much, and it would take up too much space. We did find a stash of whiskey and vodka, which we carefully stored in one of our packs.

  Next up were the guns and ammo, which were a mixed bag. Most of the firearms were barely worth their parts, though we did find a few guns hidden inside the building that were in much better shape. That's when I started to realize that there was a strict pattern in the quality of firearms. Guns that we found on corpses or lying around in the open were worn and barely working, kept together with duct tape, wonderglue, and prayers. This was expected, as the guns were likely hundreds of years old, and being used by people who didn't know how to spell gun maintenance, never mind perform it.

  Meanwhile, anything hidden away in safes or tucked up in desks or shelves was in relatively good order. Hell, the safe guns were practically pristine, untouched since the bombs fell.

  "I'm wondering if we should even bother with these," I said, racking the slide of a we pulled off a slaver, wincing at the sound of sand and grit inside. "Are they even worth lugging around?"

  "If we have room, we should bring them back," Joseph said, looking up from an old, beaten-up with an actual scope on it. "We can clean them up and combine them into something workable in our downtime."

  "Yeah… Maybe we would try and find somewhere with guns that are worth actually taking," I suggested with a frown, racking my head for an appropriate place. "There is a military armory to the North, Wheaton Armory, I think, but it's got a lot of radiation if I remember correctly… The National Guard Depot is also not too far away, but it would be tough to lug things that far..."

  "My vote is for the place with no radiation," Carlos said, inspecting a double-barreled shotgun that was covered in rust. "I'm very happy that there haven't been any hotspots near the HQ, so let's not ruin the streak."

  "Can't say I disagree with you," I admitted, shaking my head and dropping the 10mm pistol into a bag after confirming it was unloaded. "I'm not even sure that radiation works the same way here as it does back home, or if that was just game mechanics. And I'm really not looking forward to finding out."

  After doing another final sweep of the area, we finally headed home, despite there being quite a few buildings around the raider camp to loot. The sun was starting to set, and none of us wanted to get caught outdoors in the dark.

  "We can come back and loot the place more tomorrow," I assured my soldiers. "Maybe more, depending on how well that goes."

  The hike back was quick, even with our extra load. Unfortunately, even as we arrived back at the HQ, my journey wasn't over. Leon, Joseph, and I headed to the medbay, the combat medic guiding me to one of the beds while Joseph started feeding medical junk, chems, and other medical supplies into the medbay's chute.

  "I'm going to numb your arm, and it's going to linger for a few hours," Leon warned me, gathering some supplies and sitting down on a stool on my side. "You ready?"

  I nodded, and the medic carefully injected my arm with a needle before pulling back and waiting for the pain to fade. I could still feel the bullet in my arm, a dull ache that could also just be the residual pain from the original wound. Slowly, that began to fade, replaced by a deep numbness.

  After about five minutes, and after confirming that the local anesthetic was working, I watched as Leon carefully cut into my arm.

  "Normally, leaving a bullet inside you would be bad news," he explained, slicing deeper as the first cut revealed nothing. "Especially when I can't see where it is located. But with the stimpaks, a lot of things become more flexible."

  A few more shallow cuts and his scalpel hit something metal, so he switched to a pair of surgical pliers and carefully pulled the bullet out. He then took one of his stimpaks and injected it, both of us watching as the wound rapidly healed.

  "Hell of a thing," Leon said, wiping away the blood, my arm completely healed. "It's going to save me a fortune on bandages."

  I chuckled as I sat up on the edge of the bed, flexing and stretching my arm, testing its range of motion. As far as I could tell, everything was working fine. Of course, I still couldn't feel the area, so I would have to wait until later to know if I was pain-free.

  "Nicely done," I said with a nod. "Let's get inside and settle in. We only have a few hours before it starts to get dark."

  Leon nodded, and after feeding all the medical waste we had just made into the chute, and double-checking it was still set to make antibiotics, we headed back to the HQ main hall, where everyone else was waiting.