Mid Day November 1st

Beantown brewery was located on the south side of the Charles River, in the town of Waltham. With the town gone and forgotten, and only the hints of roads leading to the few barely standing buildings in the neighborhood, the Brewery was all that stood tall in the area. Of the buildings that were still standing, only one or two walls remained.

There was a bridge for trains, and one for road traffic crossing the Charles River into the south side, a road that would pass through Harvard University to the east, only the fabled university was now collapsed buildings, flooded out and eroded, an empty shell of the great institution it once was.

The sloping hills on the Northside lead down to the water's edge, while the south side was flattened. As Nate and Piper crossed the rail bridge, Red's Stockpile Gang watched from the crest of the north side hill.

Their eyes were cast towards the roof of the building, and watching for any lookouts. Racing to the loading dock in the back, they reached a set of locked double doors. Piper pressed her ear to the door as Nate picked the lock. They raised one arm, hands flat, then they closed their fists, and the gang ran down the hill towards Beantown Brewery.

\111/

Four raiders were separating them from Tower Tom in the back office. From where they were in the receiving room, they needed to go out to the right, up a ramp of stairs, across catwalks that lead left across the entire brewing vat room, and then take a right, and finally ten steps to the office doors. Still only armed with their magnum and laser blaster, the only thing they picked up from the Stockpile was a pillow which Piper held under her armpit and an empty beer bottle in her hand...

The first raider they saw was looking directly at them, leaning against the catwalk, eyes downcast and a slight tipsy stagger to her. Yawning loudly, Nate pushed a cart filled with empty wooden bottle crates. They were used for shipping bottles filled with beer, and they quietly moved towards the stairs. The raider turned around, and Nate waved Piper over, stepping lightly up the stairs. They got within ten feet of the raider when Piper held up the pillow, and Nate strolled calmly up to the female raider, but she turned and was surprised at the sight of Piper and Nate. She squinted at them and then tried to say something, then Piper wrapped an arm around her neck, strangling the pillow around her head. She fought back, thrashing and trying to getaway. Nate placed the barrel of the revolver into the pillow so that the feathers inside the lining pressed tightly against her face and finally he pulled the trigger.

At the same time, Piper threw the beer bottle as hard as she could across the production floor.

As the five other raiders on the ground floor looked to the noise of the bottle shattering as the gun went off. Picking up her legs and arms, they carried the raider to the end of the second catwalk and laid her against the outside wall to the back office.

"Who threw that?" One raider asked, looking to see where the actual bottle shattered. There was an assembly line of beer bottles underneath spouts on the ground floor, all of it connected to the holding tanks where fresh beer was brewed, and ready to be poured. Tower Tom exited the office, coming out onto the catwalk and leaning over the railing.

"What's going on out here?" He asked, a man on the ground floor took two steps and put his foot down on a bottle laying on the floor, forcing him to lose balance as the bottle rolled. Piper and Nate were to the right of the office, as Tower Tom was looking down to the left. They were trying to be stealthy, but the man who tripped reached out for a handhold and ended up grabbing a whole rack of beer bottles on his way down to the ground, yanking it off the assembly line and bringing down on top of him.

The first smashed beer bottle was forgotten about as a whole cavalcade of beer bottles rained down on the raider who tripped. As twenty-four glass bottles were smashed or clanked against the ground, Tower Tom shut his eyes and shook his head, wincing in empathetic shame for the man who just made a fool of himself.

"Fucking clean it up!" Tom yelled as the man shook himself out of the glass pile and was helped up by the closest person nearby. Turning around and strolling back into his office, Nate peered down at the mess, then quickly made his way to the office with Piper right on his heels. Nate took the revolver, spinning it around in his hand, and pressed open the door. Tower Tom was alone in the office about to sit down when Nate was running at him, swinging the butt of Kellogg's revolver as a club, and smashing him right on the crown of the head. Piper was there to choke him, silencing the yell as Nate clubbed Tom in the head again, this time in the temple, then punching him in the chin. Knocking Tower Tom unconscious, Piper and Nate both grabbed Tower Tom before he fell, and dragged him to the chair.

Bleeding from the top of his forehead they bound his mouth and duct-taped him to the chair, and rolled him into a corner. "You've got him? If he tries anything, shoot him in the foot. If he starts wiggling his wrists, trying to get out, cut off one of his fingers." Nate told Piper, she took his word and nodded, going behind his desk and keeping her gun aimed at the door. Nate took Tower Tom's gun, a .308 ported pistol, and took the elevator in his office down to the ground floor. The elevator dinged, and the door rolled back, and Nate was ready with one pistol in each hand.

The first three raiders were rolling with the Beantown Bandits for a while now, enjoying the fact that some other gang was paying them in food once a week after they kidnapped the leader's sister. Nate calmly walked up to the first one from behind, as the other two were smiling, turning their heads to the newcomer. One held a broom in his hands, sweeping up the pile of broken glass bottles, and watched as Nate pulled the trigger and blew a round hole in their comrade's head.

Nate aimed the .44 revolver at the second raider and fired, hitting him in the throat, but nearly blowing the man's head off from the neck. Shooting the last man holding the broom in the knee, he fell again, catching himself on the assembly line, but Nate kicked him into the pile of broken glass.

The man screamed as his backside was embedded with shards of glass, pain-racked up and down his spine. Rolling over, his screams of agony brought the raider's attention from all over the brewery. They came to see what was the matter and saw one of their people laying in a pool of his blood expanding across the floor, then the two dead raiders. Nate picked up their pipe pistols and tucked them into his holsters, moving on quickly as to not be exposed in the open floor.

The first raider to respond ran for Tom's office, but Piper gunned him down in three bright flashes of blue light that disintegrated the man.

Breathing heavily through her nose, she was sometimes shocked at how deadly the laser blaster was.

Heading for higher ground, Nate went straight in the direction of stairs, shooting a man twice in the chest as he was coming down, then shooting woman three times as she was ready to fire back with a hunting rifle. Tugging out the second pipe pistol, and letting Tom's drop to the ground, Nate cocked back the trigger, but the entire gun fell apart in his hands.

Forced to grab the hunting rifle off the ground, he picked it up and checked the barrel. Pulling back on the bolt, a bullet flew out, but he caught it mid-air and shoved it into his pocket.

There was a break room directly above the staircase on the third floor, with two raiders in it waiting for one of their people to come up, or Nate the shooter. Aiming pipe-pistols, Nate shouted, "Hey! We need your help down here!"

Firing two rounds into the air, one raider ran forward as the others followed behind him. Nate was waiting and let the first man run by, swinging the hunting rifle into the second man's head, he whipped out his pistol and shot the second raider two times in the chest, then fired twice with the hunting rifle at the first.

One of them carried a short double-barreled shotgun, which Nate picked up, and checked to see if it was in working order. Mentally counting in his head, that only left three raiders in the front bar of Beantown Brewery left. He heard shooting take place, gunfire, combustion pistols, and gas-powered assault rifles firing.

The constant bang-bang-bang and torrent of bullets being fired followed by pounding footsteps.

Nate went back down to the factory floor and returned to the main office where Piper was waiting. Withdrawing her tense muscles from the aiming position, they both waited for Red to arrive. Sitting down on the ground, he picked up a home improvement magazine labeled 'Picket Fences', Home projects for the casual handyman, and thumbed through the first two pages when Red's Stockpile Gang ran into the brewing room, around the catwalks, and straight to the office.

"You caught him," Darva said to Piper, Tower Tom was struggling to wake up and shake the throbbing pain from his skull, but was shaken awake by the enemy raider's words. He felt the gag in his mouth, and his hands and legs and chest bound to the rolling chair. He tried to scoot away, but his feet couldn't move.

"I'll watch him from here. Find Lily," Darva said to them. Running along the catwalks was another member of Red's Stockpile Gang, and they touched base with Darva, seeing that Tower Tom was captured, and the rest of his gang here at the Brewery was dead.

Piper was being stared at by a glowing computer monitor at the edge of her awareness on Tower Tom's desk.

The Red's raiders were checking every square inch of the brewery, making noise as they ran back and forth, sweeping the entire building from top to bottom. The process was time-consuming, and with Nate reading a magazine, or at least pretending to read a magazine, she quietly scooted over to behind Tower Tom's desk to check the files and documents on the computer as Darva went to Tower Tom.

With Red yet to make an appearance, Darva yanked out the tape gag around his mouth.

"You know who I am?"

"Fuck you. No." Tom spat.

"Doesn't matter," Darva said. "Where's Lily?"

Tower Tom smiled victoriously, knowing exactly where she was, but unwilling to part with the information.

"She's around here...somewhere."

"Where."

"Here...there...go grab a beer and we can talk this over a few drinks."

Darva took an empty glass bottle and smashed it against Tom's head, slashing his face and making him bleed out of his head even more.

"Fucking tell me."

"Who the fuck are you?" Tom asked indignantly.

"Oh no," Piper said, speed reading through all the entries in Tom's computer.

Nate read the next page in Picket Fences, not minding the question and answer session between Darva and Tom, as Piper looked for an answer on the terminal.

The next page Nate read, was how to properly sand wood boards with the grain, and how to get it the small corners if it's already inlaid in a pattern or floor. The most common way to sand a corner was with your finger, but a trick of the trade was to use an unsharpened pencil, wrap the end with sandpaper, and erase the top layer of old dried wood. Moving up in grit, the sandpaper would become finer and finer, as the surface became smoother and smoother. Eventually, you would get to polishing and buffing, which came after a finishing agent was applied to the wood. Oil or staining was not recommended, as when it came time for sanding in a year, the stain or oil-based product would seep deep into the wood pores, requiring excess layers to be taken off before it was uniform with the rest of the board.

"She's in one of the brewing vats," Piper read from Tower Tom's terminal.

Darva scowled, balling up her fists and slamming them into Tom's chest and stomach. Working him over, giving him the beatdown, Nate read the next page which was filled with advertisements for deals on five gallons buckets of paint at Hardware Town, located in the Fens, south of Fenway Park.

"Stop." In the doorframe was Red.

Piper was still wearing her shocked expression as she re-read Tom's log, Darva stepped away from Tom, and Nate set down the magazine.

Red's war face paint was reapplied, this time a yellow line separated the red paint from the upper half of her face, from the black paint on the lower half.

"People tell me you killed my sister." Red said, "How long ago did you kill my sister, Tom?"

"Two weeks," Tom replied.

Red looked at Darva and nodded. Striking Tom across the face, Darva pulled his head back towards the door to face Red. Then Darva punched him again.

"The food was good." Tom insulted her. "Why don't you shit out a kid, and I'll throw him on the grill? That'll keep me fed for a while." Red was disgusted by the thought, but she didn't display it, only looking to Darva again to hit him.

Darva struck his crotch, crushing his testicles and making him howl at a high pitch.

"You want to know the sad part?" Red asked. Piper and Nate both had to remain silent as Red got her final words in with Tom. "If you had come to me before kidnapping my sister, and offered beer in exchange for food, we would've agreed. I like beer, Darva here enjoys beer, the rest of my gang enjoys beer, but then you had to go and do something stupid."

She looked to her left, and another raider from Red's gang came up to her. She held out one hand accepting whatever it was being offered to her.

Leaning against the doorframe, Red looked down into her hands. It was a bottle of vodka.

"Darva. Break all his teeth in."

She did so without hesitation, taking a socket wrench and bashing away at Tower Tom's face and mouth until it was a scrappy mess of busted teeth and a waterfall of drool, spit, and blood pouring out of Tom's mouth while he moaned and screamed.

"Take him out front when she's finished." She said to Nate and Piper.

Walking over and taking one knee in front of Tower Tom, she lifted the butt of the bottle towards Tom's busted face and said, "Open your mouth."

Tower Tom was moaning and screaming in agony. Wailing and sobbing, coughing on blood and choking on scraps of swallowed teeth.

"Wider."

"WIDER!"

Jamming the glass bottom into his mouth, he cried and shook. She yanked it out and said, "Good." Unscrewing the cap, she splashed Tom's bleeding mouth with the 40% alcohol. This triggered him to howl and gag. Coughing as his mouth burned, and splatters of blood dripped down his chest.

"Find Lily." She told Darva. She nodded, leaving and going out into the production room floor as Red told Nate and Piper what she did before arriving here in Tom's office.

"We captured one of Tom's gang in the front. We sent him running to go find Sparta. We heard she's in Cambridge, on her way back originally. She should be here in an hour. I thank you for presenting Tom to me, with his men dead. I trust your aim is steady?"

Nate nodded.

\111/

Lily's body was found preserved in a vat of alcohol that Tom's gang was drinking from.

Two people from Red's gang took sheets and blankets from beds on the third floor and wrapped the body in it. Red spoke to all her people who joined in on the assault.

"I hate speeches, and I know you all hate listening to them, but this motherfucker is going to pay with everything he did to us and to Lily. The next fight will be against Sparta. She gets one chance, join us or die."

"We were nice, we listened to their demands when they kidnapped Lily. But, Tom lied to us. He took your leader, he took my sister, he took our food, and then he lied to us. For that, he is suffering and now he will die."

Tom was taken out front, and Red jammed a mini-nuke between his jaws, but only the tip of the warhead could fit. Red taped the explosive to his mouth and forced him into a chair fifty feet away from everyone else. The front of the brewery was devoid of any sort of tactical coverage. No concrete barriers, just a parking lot with stairs leading directly into the front door. The only road to the brewery made it easy to know which way Sparta would be coming from, so they combined their efforts and shoved a truck to block one half of the bridge coming back towards them.

Nate suggested points of interest for Red to put her men at, One rifleman on the roof of the brewery, and then gathering two harnesses off dead raiders from Tom's gang, they were instructed to hang over the ledge of the bridge directly in the middle, so that they could spring up from the side in anticipation of Sparta attacking them. Putting two men by the rail bridge, the had every direction coming from the north covered. Forcing them into a chokepoint, Sparta and her men would be forced to cross a bridge with absolutely no cover, all the way to Red and her gang.

Placing another man on a rocky outcropping to the left of the bridge on the south side, he could shoot at the bridge as well.

Overhead it was raining, making the road wet, but even in the muted gray haze, they waited silently.

Lightning flashed in the noon rain and illuminated the far side of the hills in the north. Shortly after one in the afternoon on November 1st, ten figures cam down the hill.

They followed the road, walking under leaning power lines and straight to the foot of the bridge on the opposite end. They stopped and Sparta spoke with them, but they could only hear her voice, and not what she was saying from the south side. Lining them in rows of three, she led them across and came to the opposite end of the bridge.

"You have two choices, join us, or die," Red commanded.

Sparta and her team stopped a short distance away from Red and her men. She scowled when she saw Nate and Piper standing idly by, expressionless with salvaged guns resting in their arms.

"So, you killed Tom?" Sparta asked.

"He's over there." Red's gang made sure Sparta had a clear line of sight to the man sitting in the chair in the middle of the road, away from anyone else. The beeping mini-nuke was in his mouth, he was shaking his head side to side.

Sparta looked up to Red, then to Tower Tom, then back to Red.

"I didn't know Tom killed your sister."

"I know," Red said, looking down at them. "That's why I'm giving you the one thing Tower Tom never gave to my sister, a choice. You can either work with us or against us."

Sparta was silent, quietly looking up to Red as her face was hit with raindrops. She debated, she

"Doing what?"

"Same as you've always done. Go out, collect resources, scavenge for supplies, a little grunt work, raid, nothing we wouldn't do ourselves. The only difference, you'd answer to me instead of a lying, kidnapping, murdering man like Tom." Red replied.

"And what about him?" She asked, looking over towards Tower Tom.

"If any of you decide to betray me, or try to take a stab at us, or undermine my authority, this is what will happen to you."

Red raised up a hand and snapped her fingers. The rifleman on the roof swung his sights towards the mini-nuke in Tom's gums and fired. The resulting corona explosion sent up a white fireball and mushroom cloud, leaving a crater and no sign of Tower Tom or the chair he was sitting in.

"Now, will you work for us, or against us?" Red asked one last final time.

"I never liked working for Tom," Sparta articulated. "Working for you, however, I can see that happening."

\111/

"Beware of tourist traps, if a road looks nice, or a building looks like it hasn't been touched since the bombs, it's on you to stay safe. Watch for tripwires, grenades bouquets, or my least favorite, the snare. The last one's kind of like a tripwire, but if you set it off, rope or chair gets wrapped around your feet while a heavy weight gets dropped, then you're slingshotted up into the air. Unless you've got something to cut through whatever's holding you up, or you're traveling with someone, you'll be on your own for a while, or worse, until the owner of the trap comes back."

"Diamond City Radio, always shining, this is Travis Lonely Miles."

"Up next, another heel-klicker. By Kay Kyser.