The German Shepherd lead the group on a path that went Southwest out of Fenway Park and out of Boston altogether. Into the surrounding suburbs and through parks, Nick Valentine, Nate, Piper, and Meathead all sought a fast path that avoided detection from any wandering monsters or raiders.

The path Meathead followed, tasting that burnt but stale tobacco leaf air lingering lead to finding cigar butts along the way.

"Smokes like a chimney, this guy." Nick commented.

There was a row of of two story buildings with a T-cross road two hundred feet away. Most of the bottom stories of these buildings were storefronts, with apartments, offices, or other small businesses above, but many of these buildings were collapsing one rotted support beam at a time.

At the intersection, there was a staircase behind a door leading to the second floor with access to a moderately safe room. A lounge chair was in the center of the room with a couch by the side. There were dry, crusty old towels hung on the walls to dampen the noise from the outside world.

There were spent rifle casings by the windows that could look all the way down the road. Next to the lounge chair in the center of the room was an arm stand, and a glass ashtray a pile of three cigar butts all mashed down to rubbed out nubs.

\111/

They followed railroad tracks west for two hours, then back north down a ramp near the Mass Pike Tunnel West, a tunnel that lead underneath downtown Boston.

Off to the east, they saw raiders milling about at the base of the tunnel, and below them was the site of a recent gunfight if the bodies and blood splatters had anything to say about it.

The end result was Meathead sniffing the ground, determining which scent was the right one from all the blood stains. The scent of a rotting corpse was hard to ignore, and a blown out turret with small groupings of shell casings on the ground indicated the shooter used .44 magnum rounds.

The path lead back up onto higher ground, and they followed the path that curved up towards the north. Nate was moving faster now, and when the only signs of life they'd seen in another hour was a bear, Nate ejected the 10 gauge rounds, and loaded slug rounds. These were a giant ball bearing the size of the barrel and could put a hole in just about anything. He fed the ammo in and gunned the bear down when it started running at them.

The trail eventually lead them to a small shelter underneath a train depot, and when Nate saw the stiff legs laying down on a bedroll behind cover, he didn't know what to think except to move slowly and quietly. He approached carefully and saw a landmine waiting to be tripped staring at him. He took out his knife, using a stick to pry it up, and then flick it back off into the disarmed position.

"He knows." Nate said. It was the first thing he said since leaving the stadium. "He knows he's being tracked through smell. He knows we're using a dog to track him." Nate licked his lips and shook his head. "More beer bottles, more cigars. He knows we're coming after him... and I don't fucking like it. It means we're walking into a trap. One that he's set up, just for me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!" Nate shouted, his voice rising in anger.

"Easy there, Blue. Now that we know it's a trap, we'll just have to be more careful when we do find him." Piper said, trying to calm Nate.

"That just means he's all the more dangerous and we need to consider everything he might try." Nick said.

\111/

The roads west were overgrown with small brush and bushes, and they followed Meathead across a bridge to the town of Forest Grove.

They passed semi-trucks, and billboards, one read for an ad by Hubris Comics, the Unstoppables.

"Why are you so bent on specifically, seeing Kellogg hang? Why not put two rounds of buckshot in him and put him in the ground like everyone else around here?" Nick asked. "Got a date with the hangman?"

"Matter of principal, Nick. Sure I hate Kellogg with every living fiber of my soul, but he doesn't deserve two to the head. Like when you shot Sonny with a full clip."

"So it's personal, but once you've got him, why drag him to Goodneighbor? There's not much in the way of jails, police, or courts around here." Nick argued.

"That's just it though, after I drag him to Goodneighbor and get a ruling on him, it'll validate some claims to power around here. I know for a fact Hancock would be absolutely livid to throw the book at him because Kellogg works for the Institute."

"Geeze. I'm afraid to ask what you'll do to the people in charge of the Institute when you get your hands on them." Piper commented.

"Give them a trial, and put the fear of God into them."

"Wait. You'd be willing to give those people a trial?" Piper chimed in.

"It's what they deserve. If the courts are open, that is, and if they don't try and shoot me first." Nate teased, knowing full well that the Institute's bullets and lasers would be flying at his head in less than eight weeks from now.

"From what I've gathered, the Commonwealth lacks a system of laws, a system of governance that protects people from attacking other people. What's stopping people from calling another person a synth, shooting them dead, and then finding out they were proven wrong? What happens to the executioner? Does he get to go Scott-Free?"

"I don't like it either, but that's they way things are right now." Nick said. "There was a movement a while ago, but the Institute shut that down before it ever got started."

"Well, it's gotta be someone who whips this place back into shape. I'd rather be part of it. Last time around, I played the role of an A-1 citizen, minded my manners, and went to war just like every other good little boy on the block. When I came back, I wasn't interested in politics, we were too busy calling bullshit on the leaders."

"War? What war?"

"The War for Alaska. The Sino-American War. I'm over two hundred years old, Piper. Get with the program. Vault-Tec threw me in a cryogenic freezer and called it an experiment."

Both Nick and Piper were unaware of that little detail, it never came up during Nate's interview. Piper was asking for details about it before hand, but that detail never seemed to come up.

"Are you saying that you've seen this world before the bombs fell, Nate?"

"Yep. Meathead and me are both made from Pre-war grit. We don't get smoothed down as easily as anything else we've seen so far. That's what most people refer to it as, right? The big war? The great war?"

"How has this not come up, Nate? I've been following you for three days now and I haven't gotten a straight answer out of you." Piper said.

"That's because it's a long story, and I haven't even begun telling you how it started. Let me put Kellogg on the path to the afterlife, and then I'll tell you the whole thing leading up to the big sha-bang."

\111/

They followed the cracked and buckling road up to the west, where Meathead howled and there were three busted robots laying on the road.

A dead protectron, a shot up eyebot, and an assaultron with it's head ripped off muttering "Danger. Danger. Danger."

As Nate, Meathead, Nick, and Piper approached the assaultron, the robot spoke. "Warning. Assailant...lower your weapon."

"So what the heck do we have here?" Nate asked, looking down at the assaultron's head.

"[Error. System Corrupt. Loss of motor control in legs.]"

"What happened here?" Nate asked.

"[Error. Operator deceased. Threat Level Omega. He killed us.]"

Meathead ran to Nate's side and quietly whined, paw raised and pointing up the road where tall half-dead trees encroached over the cracked and busted road, casting darker shadows on the giant figure moving through the trees and towards them.

They looked up and to the west and Nate scowled...A deathclaw was walking across the road a hundred meters out.

"Jeeeeezus Aheych Christ. Look at that fucking thing." Nate said, head nodding forward..

A hand grabbed his arm and tugged on him. "I'm looking at it, Nate, and we gotta fucking go! We are not prepared to take on that thing." Nick said, worried about the massive creature ahead.

It stomped back and forth across the road, breathing heavily. They could hear it from where they stood underneath the super highway overpass.

"Wait. Wait. It sees us." Nate said, "Go."

Nate turned and gave Nick and Piper a shove and they took off running towards Forest Grove Marsh.

Meatead was about to run, but Nate stayed the course and marched straight at the deathclaw.

He bellows the first chorus of "GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!" His face was beet red, the blood coursing through his veins.

The singing made Nick and Piper stop and look back when they heard it, "NATE! You're gonna Fucking DIE! LET'S GO!"

Nate only decided to sing louder.

"No, Piper! Come on! We need to move to higher ground and cover him. That thing's gonna be on us next, and he's got it in his mind to take on the world right now."

"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His TRUTH IS MARCHING ON!"

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming Lord!
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON!"

Nate screamed, shouting the charging deathclaw down to a fast paced trek. Twenty meters out, the deathclaw dragged his claws along the ground, digging up the road on both sides of the medium.

"Gory Gory What a Hell of a Way to Die!!!" Nate shouted. Nick and Piper retreated to the top of a semi-truck cab, laying flat with their own guns out.

The deathclaw slowed to a crawl, roaring in return.

"Gory! Gory! What a Hell of a Way to Die! Gory! Gory! What a Hell of a Way to Die. He ain't gonna jump no more!" The deathclaw slowed, and then passed Nate by.

Nate still faced west, and continued to sing.

"I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on..."

Hmmn hmm hmm hm hmn hm hmmmn hummm..

Humming the rest of the chorus, Nate didn't turn away or flinch. He refused to let himself move until the deathclaw was long gone.

"-Nick!-" Piper whispered loudly, the deathclaw walked past the front of the cab, passing the rest of the trailer, and then moving down through the flooded streets of Forest Grove Marsh to the north.

"-What the hell was that!?-"

"I don't know, but do we really want to find out?" Nick replied.

They crawled down off the top of the semi-truck trailer, and to Nate. His arms were spread out wide by his side, the sun was coming down on him, and they tried calling out to him. They approached him, calling out to him again but he was frozen to the spot.

"Nate?"

"Blue?" Piper tried again.

They came around to his frontside and saw the flood of tears running down his face and dripping onto his Vault suit. His eyes were closed and his face was stained wet with tears.

Meathead came up to him and leaned against his legs, Piper reached out and touched his shoulder. "Nate?"

He let his arms slowly let go by his side, dropping them down.

"It's gone?"

"Yeah, Blue. It's gone..." Piper waited a moment before asked her next question. "How'd you do that?" She shook her head, " I saw it, and I still don't believe it."

Nate cracked a wide smile. "Suppose they recognize music, pitch and tone, I didn't present myself as a threat, and he didn't attack."

\111/

"You talk about saving lives, Nate. But if you want to save some real lives, you teach people how to do what you did with that deathclaw, and people will be through the roof." Nick said.

Piper tried to piece the analogy together in her head, "What?"

"I...uh...I'm gonna have a hard time convincing people back home what I saw. I can already imagine the people's remarks. 'Nick, must be having a glitch', check your eye socket's Nick, must need a software update, Nick. "

"That reminds me..." Nate started, looking down at his Pip-Boy.

Meathead barked, he had crawled up the side of the road, and was looking down on them. The way Kellogg went right right up a hill, through groves of fallen trees with orange fungus growing out of the stumps.

"Oh, no." Nate said,knowing exactly where they were. Dead ahead was a rusty chain link fence, broken and missing sections, but tied to a pole was a bloody bandage. Knotted and gently blowing in the wind, it was Kellogg's way of saying 'Come and get me.'

"What? What is it?" Nick asked.

"He's expecting us." Nate replied.

"Well, how do you suppose we get the jump on him?"

"We do the unexpected, that's how."

"And what would that be?" Piper asked.

"I'll figure that out when we find him, but...If he's bold enough to leave a clue out like this for us to find, then he's gotta be close, and I know what's beyond this fence."

"Yeah? We're pretty close to Fort Hagen, I think."

Coming to the top of the hill, that is exactly where they were. There was the Greater Massachusetts Blood Clinic, and the next building after that was Fort Hagen. There were fallen trees on the road, creeping clusters of vines that were dying off in the cold end of October Weather, and finally the massive building lined with patriotic red, white, and blue flag banners with a whole cluster of turrets on top.

Meathead sat down outside the front doors to the building and howled.

"Damnit." Nate said, "Well I guess the trail stops here, folks. He's inside, right Meathead?"

Meathead barked, growling loudly at the building.

"I knew the good old boy would sniff him out, let's take it from here and give our four legged friend a break."

"What's the plan, Nate? How are we gonna smoke him out?" Nick asked.

"All you, Blue." Piper said, trying to be his cheerleader.

Nate inhaled and exhaled, breathing in and out. Staring up at the building, Nate grabbed the mini-nukes off his back and set them down on the ground.

"First, we blow him out. But..."Nate trailed off, thinking about how to attack Kellogg, how to minimalize the damage, how to keep Kellogg from dying here, and getting him all the way to Downtown Boston.

"Alright. I got it." Nate said.

"Let's hear it." Piper said.

"I'll be back in an hour."

"What? Where are you going? We found where the guy's hiding, didn't we? Where are you going?"

"I'm going back for something that'll help with getting him out of there, that wont kill him. I need to go get it. It might be the only way to keep him alive while I take him downtown to hang."

"I'm with Nick on this one, sounds like a lot of effort to try and drag him around the Commonwealth." Piper said.

"Then wait here and watch the building. I'm going to go grab something from Vault 111. I'll be back and I'll be running the whole way." Nate unclipped his ammo belt, dropped his guns, his holsters, his pads of leather armor, and his backpack so he was carrying only a .44 snubnose with six rounds, and a box of water.

"What's in Vault 111? Where is it?" Piper asked. Nate pointed to some power lines miles away,

"See those powerlines? There's a suburb called Sanctuary Hills over that way. It's north of there."

Pointing to her right, "There's a trailer park east of here. Go check it out. Some soldiers from the base lived there, go there. Go find some ammo, guns, whatever you can find. There's also a big maintenance shed and vehicle bay south of here, where they would work on all the power armors, cars, trucks, maybe a tank. Go there too. Now, I'm going to run. I promise I'll be back soon."

"Got it. We'll check those places out. Meet back here?"

"Yep."

Nate took off sprinting, trying to achieve a five minute mile, Meathead bounded off after him.

Piper and Nick looked at each other and then to Fort Hagen, it was a large three story building, built down into the ground with a parking garage inside. The turrets weren't pointing outwards, they were all aimed inwards. It was a detail Nick didn't notice before until Nate left.

\111/

"I want to check out the building here, see what's up with those turrets and see if we can find a way in. If you want, you can either go check the places Nate mentioned, or follow me."

"I'll go check the shed, see if I can find some power armor. That would be pretty nice to have some of that again."

There was a loud POP and flash of green light off in the direction Nate ran off to, but they missed the flare of light.

"What was that?" Nick asked.

"Whatever it is, Nate and Meathead can handle it. They're smart, they took down Swan, if you didn't hear."

"They took down Swan? Geeze, now I'm sorry for whatever thing tries to get in their way."

\111/

Piper followed the road south, coming to two large three story sheds made from corrugated tin, and a big sign that said 'Fort Hagen Depot.'

It was just south of the Greater Mass Blood Clinic, which she avoided when she saw the nesting bloodbugs, and didn't want to disturb them. The first one was filled with empty shelves and at one point someone in the past used it as a shelter.

The second shed was filled with radroaches, which once they saw her, they flew down off the walls and attacked her. She immediately shot at the first dozen, and then swung her chained swatter at every last bug, making sure they were bashed into the ground and fully dead. Great green globs of blood splattered as their exoskeletons were crushed, and she hit them in the head and brought the heavy bat right down on their backs.

Her displeasure of dealing with a small swarm of radroaches was worth it, hanging up in the shed was a frame of power armor and a stack of fusion cores.

\111/

Nick circled Fort Hagen, looking up at the turrets pointed on the roof, there was scaffolding leading up to the roof, and every way was pointing up towards them. Suddenly, the turrets sprang to life and targeted Nick. He fired up at the turrets as chirps of machine gun fire was sent at him.

Taking cover behind trees, he shot at the first one until it exploded. His aim with a pipe revolver pistol was impeccable. Using Nate's Colt LE901 rifle, he shot at the remaining turrets from afar, and dismantled all seven turrets on the roof.

Then it was only a matter of finding a way into the building. The way onto the roof was rigged with landmines, but, down through the parking garage, Nick found the entrance into the building through a door hidden by a car, and piles of junk leaning up against it from the outside. Poking his head inside. the building was absolutely quiet, but it felt alive.

Returning to the front entrance, he waited for Piper or Nate to return, and was pleasantly surprised when she returned wearing a suit of power armor. Stomping up the road, it wasn't hard to not hear her coming.

"The blue-grey armor looks good on you, Piper."

"Thanks, did you find a way in?"

"Yep. Down through the parking garage. I think Kellogg was planning on leading us up onto the roof, and have us go in that way, but I found a door he tried to hide down below in the parking garage. Up on the roof are landmines and I'm sure Kellogg's rigged the whole building from top to bottom to keep us from getting in and finding him. He was probably going to use the side door as a means of quick escape if things started turning south for him."

"Well, I got what I need, I'll stand watch here. You go check out the trailer park Nate mentioned." Piper said.

\111/

Walking down the road, Nick carried Nate's rifle with care, knowing he'd have to give it back eventually. It rained, but Nick was oblivious to the cold water.

The Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates was light up with a neon sign, where the power was coming from, Nick could only guess.
It was a small little community, the streamliner trailers all parked with big trucks next to them. Almost every single trailer had a truck next to it, and Nick figured they had more power and made it easier to tow. That is, if the wheels hadn't rotted away, or the trucks could operate after all this time.

The circular park had only one road going in that split off into a loop with spaces along both sides. At the entrance was the office building, and behind it was a swimming pool, now only green with algae. The residents of Fiddler's Green were still there, crawling up out of their centuries long slumber as feral ghouls. Nick shot at them, clubbing them in the head if they got too close and tried tearing pieces off of him. There were at least twenty, and each of them only took a shot or two with the .308 rounds from Nate's Colt to be put back into the ground for good.

Poking his head inside each trailer, his mechanical heart was warmed and saddened at the same time when he found a skeleton inside one of the bathrooms with an M1 Garand rifle pointed up inside the mouth, with a piece of the back skull blown outwards. Taking the rifle, the finger bones didn't want to unfurl.

"Darnit, I know it's yours, but time to let go!" Nick pried the fingers off, and took the rifle, and kept moving around the trailer park. He almost jumped when he saw something the size of a super mutant standing inside of one of the next trailers. He peered in, and then saw light catching the metallic sheen of a partially assembled set of T60 power armor inside.

Picking the lock, the sliding door to the trailer opened roughly, and needed to be shoved the last bit to open completely. There sitting in the trailer was another skeleton on the one couch, with a box of tools next to him, and a frame of power armor.

\111/

SNAP

Nick and Piper were both waiting with their recently acquired suits of power armor when Nate and Meathead came running back. They were wet, breathless, and sweating, but in Nate's arms was a gun of which neither Piper or Nick never saw before.

"What is that?" Piper asked,

"Well, don't you two look all fancy." Nate commented, "This is the cryolator...and these..." Nate held up two grenades with blue stripes around them. "Are cryogenic grenades. The overseer to Vault 111 saw to it that he wanted to freeze and preserve specimens for study. But, he didn't have enough grenades and knew the concussive force could kill them eventually after multiple blasts...This, however," Nate raised the cryolator, "I'm going to use to freeze Kellogg, drag his frozen body all the way, where ever I want, and then let him suffer the consequences."

They were both quite surprised at the statement and the tools Nate was going to use to achieve it. "Are you serious?"

"Very. Now, was there any movement? Anything at all from inside the building?"

"There's synths inside. We'll have to go through either the roof, which Nick found out it was rigged, or the smart option, through the parking garage." Nate shook his head.

"I planned on going through the front door."

They both looked at Nate like he was crazy, "Nate, the front door is barricaded. It would take hours to clear all that junk out."

"Just...Take cover. Please?" Nate said, stooping down to grab his bandolier of mini-nukes. He reached into his pockets and dug out balls of cotton, shoving them into his ears.

"Oh, ghee, take cover." Nick said, moving for the crumbling bar across the street from Fort Hagen.

Nate reached inside the mini-nuke, twisting the ignition primer so it started to beep. Following Nick and Piper into the bar, he went upstairs to the blown out second floor, exposed to the street and brought his arm up and back, and then heaved the mini-nuke like a football. It spiraled through the air, hardly any wobble to it, it was one of the better throw's of Nate's career as it struck the front door barricades and erupted in a massive firey explosion. The front half of the building was bucked upwards and into the air, then collapsed down. The second floor of Fort Hagen was exposed, and Synths were running up from the first floor, out the second.

"FUCK YOU, KELLOGG!" Nate yelled, heaving a second mini-nuke at the fort.

He shouted again, heaving a third at a cluster of synths all pouring out of the second floor of the building.

"Nate! How the heck are you gonna find him, if you're gonna kill him with nukes?!" Piper shouted.

"I know buildings like that inside and out, and I were him, he's all snug in the command center underneath the building! He ain't going fucking NOWHERE!" Flinging the third and fourth mini-nukes like shot-puts, the parking garage collapsed in on itself, and the front terrace was blown to smithereens. Nate flung the last mini-nuke, really putting his arm into it and it blew up the administrative offices. Only a handful of synths were barely operational, the back west end where the elevators leading down to the command center were untouched, which is exactly what Nate was aiming to avoid. The walls were plastered with dirt, dust, and rubble. Parts of the wall were fractured, crumbling and missing large sections.

The air was saturated with radiation, and would stay in the area until it dissipated. Nate was furious, and it was being wrought through nuclear force and cooled by the freezing rain in the air. It was turning to sleet by the time they walked across the street, and stayed that way until Nate and company found the elevator in the west ends of the building leading down to the command center.

"How'd you know the way down was over here, and that you wouldn't accidentally collapse him in?" Nick asked.

"Cause I've been here before." Nate tapped the elevator buttons down, and let them slide open. "This building is meant to keep running even after the world turns to shit."

The sleet turned to snow, and when they stepped into the elevator and turned around, they saw the flakes falling down through the building.

The elevator doors closed and they descended.

\111/

Next Chapter: Ch. 33 Kellogg Estimated time remaining: 26 Hours, 26 Minutes