The second expedition from Vault 111 lead Nate and Curie on a western route, staying to the North of Boston. Their first stop was the General Atomics Galleria, only to have a destination in mind and a safe haven to rest for a few minutes before moving on to Malden.

Nate had been meaning to come North this way ever since the bartender, Joe, back in Bunker Hill mentioned his grandfather up here. A minuteman, he reminded himself. It wouldn't take too long to scour the area,

Nate crawled forward, on his stomach, the tip of his wrapped gun barrel leading the way through the low foliage as he quietly crept forward to the crest of the embankment.

Directly infront of him was a 10ft. drop straight to concrete sidewalk, then across the street was the Medford Medical Center.

Three super mutants and a mutant hound dog were outside, one sat out front next to the double doors leading into the hospital, while one wandered to the right of the first, carrying a mini-nuke, casting glances around the parking lot, while the third mutant with a savage dog were far to the left-hand side of the building, from Nate's point of view.

Lining up his sights, the sitting target was the first to be fired. The rag wrapped around the front of Nate's rifle was ripped off as the bullet pierced through the fibers, setting the fringes of it on fire. It muffled the first shot, but the clang of a bullet being fired was still audible to the two other mutants and hound.

Sitting so perfectly, it was one shot through the skull, then the mutant slumped over. The other two mutants froze for a moment, turning towards Nate and the noise, but didn't know where to look yet. This allowed enough time for Nate to line up his second shot. The mini-nuke carrying mutant slowly took a step forward, wrapped feet shifting gravel in the parking lot, one hand on the trigger ready to prime the explosive.

The second shot that rang out was much louder, but it struck the mutant's chest, punching a gory hole out through the back of the ribs. The explosive was thrown on a reflex into the air, crashing down onto the ground with a tense and loud 'CLANG' as the mini-warhead did not like being tossed about so carelessly. It rolled across the ground and petered to a stop some three meters away.

Seeing the flaming rag, the super mutant savage raised its rifle and fired a dozen rounds at where it thought Nate was, sending the mutant hound ahead into the fight. Seven shots were fired back, but the super mutant was slow in taking cover, not taking advantage of its surroundings and still caught up in the surprise attack. When it tried to hunch down behind a waist high cement barrier, the arch of its back was still completely exposed while it reloaded.

Nate fired at the top of the mutant's back, blowing holes into the mutant's spine and shooting apart its shoulder blades.

As the mutant hound bounded across the road, it reached the wall and ran up, jumping up the ten feet in a snap, its jaws were wide open, ready to bite down and thrash apart anything it could sink its teeth into.

A revving, whiling sawblade came vertically straight towards the mutant hound's head, colliding the spinning diamond-tipped blades with the dog's skull, the blade went straight down between the eyes, the nose, and the top half of the jaw. Sinking into the brain, blood and bone bits were spraying in every direction as Curie kept Nate from getting his head bitten off. The robot wasn't spared from the dog's gore, neither was Nate as he closed his right eye to the shower.

Curie's saw blade stopped spinning, and her arm retracted inwards, replaced with a regular claw for gripping items.

With all four targets infront of the hospital dead, Nate waited another minute for any more reinforcements to come out the front, then advanced forward.

Not going through the main door, Nate and Curie went in through a broken window to a patient's room, quietly entering the East side of the hospital.

\111/

"When we get to Malden, we'll need to be absolutely quiet, no talking. Curie, there's no telling if there's people inside, or if there are raiders, terrorists, commies, ghouls, hostile robots, or mutants in the area," Nate rattled off, hoping one of the words he said registered to the nurse droid. "But, whatever we do find, we will sweep and clear the hospital until the perimeter is secure and all hostiles are down. I know for a fact there's a surgery center on the 4th floor, which will have the best chance of finding surgical equipment, as for the surgery data and operating drives..." Nate blew out a breath. "We'll have to find doctor's offices for any medical textbooks or holodisks...I'm not familiar with the layout."

The times Nate went to the Medford Medical Center was, thankfully, for visiting other relatives and family that came here when they were sick. He had a general idea of where most public areas were located, but what he wanted was most likely in an area he, Nora, and Meathead hadn't been to in two weeks for them.

\111/

Leaving the rifle outside, and favoring the 10 gauge shotgun in hallways and enclosed areas, Nate swallowed tensely as he heard way too many footsteps thumping around and super mutants talking.

Breathing inward, then exhaling, he passed the skeleton hooked up to an empty dried out IV bag that lay in the hospital bed. Easing the door to the hallway open, rubble and dirt scuffed the floor, but nothing was amiss yet. Leaning around the door, he could partially see the nurse's station where one mutant had his back to him, but clearly talking to another mutant just out of view behind the nurse's desk.

"No attacks today."

"Bots haven't shown up either."

"Not hungry for bots, hungry for humans."

Checking all directions, and stepping out, Nate crouch walked down the hall fifteen feet, stopping when he saw the left arm of the second mutant. He was less than eight feet away from both super mutants, and raised his shotgun.

Finger on the trigger, Nate stepped into the second super mutants line-of-sight, but in the darkness of the hospital hallways, it didn't immediately register to the mutant. It wasn't carrying a weapon, and was about to break conversing with the first mutant when it was caught unaware by Nate.

The shotgun blasted out the 1/10 of a pound-weight tungsten-alloy metal bearings at a rate of 1350 feet per second at a range of eight feet.

The effect of firing a second 10 gauge shell less than a moment later at the 2nd mutant, was like painting the entirety of the back wall in the nurses station blood red. Each booming blast echoed through the wing of the hospital, but by the time two mutant hounds galloped to the scene, followed by six more super mutants.

"Come out, come out, Human! We know you're here!"

"You'll die, human! I'll rip your bones through your skin before you leave here!"

Smarter than the usual sack of rocks, two of these mutants were stinging short sentences together, and from the crack in the door Nate was peering through, directing the rest of them. They were all gathered around the station, and the phrase "Like shooting fish in a barrel," was replaying over and over in his head on how to deal with the situation at hand. Cradling his shotgun, Nate ejected the magazine of shotgun shells, and replaced it with a different one. This was purchased from Arturo in Diamond City three days ago, and now he was presented with a chance to use them.

Breaching rounds, small bits of spiral metal compact into a shotgun shell, and made for blasting through drywall and other thin barriers. Without an immediate target in front of the barrel, the metal shrapnel tended to fly in every direction and shred anything it touched. The only downside was the range.

Fifteen feet, and eight targets, with eight shells in the magazine. They were ready and prepared, pistols, handguns, and pipe rifles aiming at him as he opened the door. Bullets fired, striking the wall and wooden frame, but Nate was smart to keep his body mass out of the door frame, firing through with the shotgun bucking in his hands as hundreds of tiny red-hot metal blades flew through the air, bouncing and cutting and shredding everything in the hallway and beyond.

Nate couldn't tell how many mutants were down, but one mutant hound survived, and ran for the doorway. Nate retreated away from the door and was at the backwall of the room, ready to move outside again if needed, but he saw the shadow of the doorframe grow dark and he didn't hesitate to fire.

"AGH! I'M WOUNDED! MAKE THE HUMAN SUFFER!"

Nate fired at the door, listening to the impact of metal bearing punch through drywall and tile, blowing out, and then into green flesh. Another mutant was downed outside of the room Nate was in, when he drew out his .44 magnum and waited for the next noise.

The sound of footsteps running over cracked tile, dirt, and rubble, charging along the hallway to get to the door, the Super Mutant had to duck its head down to get under the doorframe, opening itself up to be shot three times by Nate.

"WHY ISN'T THE HUMAN DEAD YET!?" The same mutant shouted, and in doing so, Nate wondered if he killed the rest of them.

There was no immediate reply, but there was still one mutant alive, shuffling around, trying to find a purchase on something to stand him upright.

If only they had a wheelchair.

Nate took cover by the doorframe, peering out and seeing eviserated hallway and bodies, with one of them still moving.

"IT'S A HUMAN! YOU CREATED US, NOW SUFFER FOR YOUR SINS!" The mutant shouted, but nothing else came running.

"Oy." Nate said. The Mutant thrashed and jerked its head to Nate, boring holes into Nate's flesh with its eyes.

"BLEED HUMAN! SUFFER AND DIE!" It shouted, flailing around its lacerated arms, the super mutant barely had any arm strength, and could not stand up either.

"What made you so smart, but made you so dumb?" Nate turned away from the super mutant as it cursed at him. "Does the FEV really retard humans that much?"

"HUMANS HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIVE! THEY ARE CATTLE!"

"I suppose in about two years, I could have a working antigen to unmake the super mutants. I could turn you human, how's that sound?" Nate asked rhetorically.

"THEY WILL NEVER UNDO PERFECTION!"

"It scares you, doesn't it? The thought that one day, everything you've ever known suddenly gone in an instant?" Nate snapped his fingers. "Just like that? God comes down with a Hand of Fire and wipes it across the whole slate? I wouldn't know the feeling." Bored, Nate's eyes strayed away from the super mutant to a row of cabinets and a case mounted to the wall. "Wonder what it's like," He said with no emotion beyond the first word.

"NOTHING SCARES US! WE ARE INVINCIBLE!"

"Ah! Uh-huh! I hear you...keep talking." Nate said, ignoring the conversation, instead he could be heard moving chairs aside, shoving a desk back, and then a cracking of glass as he broke through a dust covered emergency fire-ax case.

"Are you sure?" Nate asked the super mutant, raising the ax up over his head.

"NO! STOP!"

"AH-HA! There it is. If I begged you to stop, you would've just killed me."

Nate slammed the fire ax down onto the mutant's neck, severing the throat. Twice he swung to decapitate the mutant, Nate went around and put an ax blade through the rest of the mutants skulls to make sure they were dead.

Loosely holding onto the black rubber grip of the ax handle, Nate called out.

"Curie. You can come out now. They're dead."

\111/

Finding a veritable treasure trove of drugs was enough to make Nate overjoy, but couldn't muster up the time or the energy to show it. Every drug stocked in this section of the hospital was under lock and key inside a security cage. Everything available to man at the time of the bombs falling, completely untouched, sealed, and under a few layers of dust. The door was barricaded, but the magnetic lock was connected to a personal computer. When the rest of the hospital was clear, he would come back through again to scour every pill and medicine bottle from its preserved sanctuary. The super mutants hadn't been able to get in, and nobody in the last two hundred years hadn't been able to get in either, but the second reason was more partial because of the presence of the first.

The administration offices and doctors offices were easy enough to tell apart, but the search for medical texts were fruitless. At best, they came across a few issues of Massachusettes Medical Journal, piles of old x-rays, and a few books pertaining to biology and diseases, all of which Curie logged for reference later, but nothing substancial that would help her perform the surgery.

Their search turned up a ring of maintenance keys to the surgery center wing. The hospital was sectioned off into eight areas, Foyer, Patient Rooms, Intensive Care Unit, Adminstration, Doctor's Offices and observation rooms for diagnosis of mild issues, Physical Therapy Gym, Cafeteria, and Surgical wing.

While there was an alternate route to get into the Surgical Wing, which is what the super mutants were using right now, to get there without using the most direct route would take you through the patient ward on the first floor, through ICU on the second, down a long hallway and up through a hole in the ceiling where the roof shunted in and collapsed, where you would need to climb up six feet, to get to the third floor, then walk back to the stairwell, up to the fourth floor, then finally you would be at the back door to the operating theater.

With the key in hand, all they needed to do was walk up the stairs to the fourth floor from the foyer, and then go in.

\111/

Curie was silent as her eyes roamed the walls of Medford Medical, it was as Nate described, but the interior was completely destroyed in her opinion. Like Vault 81, the walls were deteriorating in many places, but the people Nate shot at defied classification at first. Whole new files and pictures needed to be logged and stored for everything on the Super Mutant.

She noticed the changes to Nate's patterns of speech first and foremost. Comparing it to his pulse, rate of oxygen consumption, and infrared scan of his body temperatures, being in destroyed buildings with hanging meat bags of human body parts, hunting the super mutants, baiting them out to be killed, it all made Nate uncomfortable, and were all components of a toxic living environment, but the man was quick to focus on all the tiny details around him. Curie suspected that her traveling companion was just as articulate and detail oriented as she was, it was easy to tell by watching the iris of Nate's eyes dilate and retract as his gaze combed over the hospital ruins interior.

His breath was increasing as their path lead them to the foot of the operating theater, but there was a terrible odor that made Nate tense and make his heart beat faster as well.

Reaching out and turning the key to the door, it quietly clicked open, but creaked as the door swung wide enough to let Nate and Curie through.

The wave of horrifying, gag-worthy odors assaulted Nate, making him shudder and recoil, stepping away from the open door. "Egh," He blew the noxious gas away from him, tying a mask around his face to stifle the smell.

It was a short hallway that met with a T-junction, but the flickering light over the dried blood along the walls, and the skeletons left behind from centuries ago did little to make the hallway more inviting. Straight ahead, Nate could see the doors to the operating theater.

At the junction, one hallway to the left was completely collapsed, with a nurse receptionist desk to the right. A sign marked 'Observation' lead down a hallway to the right, and without making more noise in this section of the building, they opted to go down the hallway to look into the operating room.

Two mutant hounds and their tamers were butchering human corpses in piles and piles and piles. Nate fell back away from the window, not wanting to let the image of dozens, upon dozens, upon dozens of humans piled up and hacked to pieces. It was a slaughter house, limbs being thrown into piles, organized based on arms, legs, heads, or torsos. The dead men were having their cock and balls chopped off and tossed directly to the mutant hounds who snatched them up and chomped them down like tasty scraps. Everything was red, especially the freshly cut bones that were thrown into a rotting heap.

"Monseuir Nate, you are witnessing a number of horrible, gory, images that are unappealing to the human psyche. You ned to remove yourself from the situation and find a calm place to relax and slow your heart rate. It's been well above 140 beats per minute for the last seven minutes. As to their deaths, if getting rid of them who would do such casual butchering and slaughter of humans will assist with calming you down, then I will help you kill them."

Nate dragged himself away, leaving the scene and wrapping his arms around his head. Curie noted his breath was more strained, but he was breathing harder, partially because of his mask. But the temperature in his limbs was dropping, he was hyperventilating and Curie reached out a claw to put under his armpit.

She guided him back to a empty office, closed the door, and sat down against the wall.

\111/

"Thank you Curie, I'm also trying to protect you too, because you're my only option right now for saving Nora."

"Monseuir, the surgery room is disinfected and sanitized through chemical induction through the vents to prevent any airborne bacteria from developing in the operating theater. My filters show that one of these chemicals was denatured alcohol as a dispersant. The room would've been sealed and all human personnel would've vacated the room during the sanitation process. If we were to leave a large enough flame inside the surgery room, then activate the cleaning protocol, the entire room would be expunged. Causing considerable damage to the ventilation, it would be wise to vacate because fire might spread to the rest of the building as well."

"While I do not condone the burning of a hospital, after exploring this building in depth, there is no easy way to say this, but the building is structurally unsound. Supports are leaning more than 9 degrees! Many exposed wires and cables ripped and pulled down from the ceiling, or left to hang, I identified six different types of mold in many sanitation bays, and while the violence only added to the unsanitary conditions of excess gore on the walls, and floor, this building is only fit to be condemned, so I say it is time for something greater to rise from the ashes."

"...Like a flare?" Nate finally asked.

When Curie spoke to Nate, it reminded him of Codsworth finally seeing his old master again, the list of small grievances that couldn't be addressed for so long all came tumbling out.

"Oui,"

"Then let's do it."

\111/

Nate and Curie would set the fire, but it would be half an hour before the the lookout at the Bunker Hill lookout obelisk saw the smoke in Malden. One minute, he saw some white smoke, signs of something wet catching fire, but then it turned black and rose straight up. The top floor of the Medford Medical Hospital was on fire, the roof primarily, but it was hard to tell how fast it was spreading.

In that half hour, Nate and Curie would leave the Hospital, skirting the attention of raiders who would discover the fire raging next door to their metro train-station within minutes, and come across painted white skulls on the outside of the Malden Middle school.

A two story school, the football and soccer field, baseball diamond, and playground behind it took up more square acreage than the building itself. But, there were no lookouts, there were no signs of anyone in the school itself, only the white Gunner skulls. It wasn't until they reached the white linoleum hallway with hundreds of muddy footprints in both directions leading down to the basement that there was more to be seen.

The door to Vault 75 was wide open, three Gunners on the inside, completely oblivious to Nate and Curie approaching them. Lights were shining out through the open door, illuminating the duo when they passed into its shining beams.

Over the course of the next day, the rotten-two hundred year old timbers would succumb to the fire, and the flames would be hot enough to melt the rusted cars in the parking lot. It would rage and rage, and the smell on the air was putrid too, but by tomorrow, most everyone in the Commonwealth would know that another building, another super mutant base, went up in smoke.

Nate could only speculate on how many the super mutants were in number, but if the Institute had been creating mutants since before the war, then there could be tens of thousands super mutants, all in bands of groups anywhere from three to twenty, and upwards of fifty. It didn't sit well in his mind, so many brutal killing machines that lack empathy or logic, never showing any hesitation. They would surely try to take another location within Malden when they realized that the Medford hospital was gone. That only left two suitable locations left within the small berg which might've been used as a base camp by the Minutemen in Brent Savoldi's time, the long dead father of Joe Savoldi.

There weren't any signs, banners, or insignia's of the Minutemen, a rifle and a lightning bolt overlaid like two crossbones, inside the Medford Hospital. Without any trace of them, and after clearing out the pharmaceutical cages for all the equipment, medicine, and drugs, the building was now worthless. It was a mass grave site, and was soon a funeral pyre for the remaining super mutants still alive inside, and all their victims.

Medford Medical Hospital was a location the Minutemen could've housed and protected people and settlers thirty years
ago, but it wasn't the site of some great battle Joe Savoldi described. The Minutemen would've chosen a historical site, but with only plaques dedicated to listing areas where Union troops once camped, the fields and suburbs around Malden weren't likely. That left Med-Tek Headquarters, maker of Mentats, which seemed like an unlikely choice for the Minutemen to have chosen back then, or Malden Middle School, established in 1996. Of the two, the school community center held the possibilty of being a bigger draw than the medical-research building.

Nate and Curie walked up the street to the Malden Middle School, as the fire at Medfore Medical spread to more parts of the building. The supplies were safely stashed away inside of an ambulance, far enough away from the fire that was becoming more and more visible too the rest of the Commonwealth.

Long before the fire consumed the rest of the hospital, Nate and Curie were already standing at the doors to the Malden Middle School, held up from entering by markings they discovered. It wasn't the Minutemen, instead it was white skulls with cross-hairs painted on the front, the mark of the Gunners.

The ground was covered in mud and dirt, dozens of footprints of boots tracking dirt back and forth into the Malden Middle School, but its first floor was vacant, its second floor was vacant as well, Nate almost lead himself to believe the Gunner base was in disuse until they came to the basement, and in the wall was a giant hole for a Vault-Tec. door.

Curie grabbed the Gunner's arm with one claw, then brought her whirling buzz saw down on the woman's elbow, severing through the limb. She screamed wildly as she took two steps backwards, clutching at her stub of an arm before falling down.

While parts of Vault 75 had emergency power, no one knew how to fix the lighting, and abandoned the bunker, leaving Gunners to move in. Nate and Curie arrived in their plunder room, a room filled with all the possessions and items ever taken off a freshly killed scavenger or wastelander, and brought here to be sorted. It let them realize if they tried to speak with them, they were likely going to die.

Approaching the Gunners, they were like the Super Mutants in many ways, only Super Mutants were once human, the Gunners still are.

Killing them and burning the Malden Hospital was only letting the rest of the Commonwealth be aware that the Sole Survivor from Vault 111 was blazing a trail straight to him.

\111/

A long wide cart used for carrying and moving the school's lunch tables, was now being stacked with Gunner's bodies. Seventeen total, Nate kicked empty suitcases and boxes out of the way to get the bodies back to the basement entrance. The Vault could be used again in the future, but for now it would stay abandoned. Nate used his Pip-boy to close the door behind them, and wheeled the cart across the ramp, into the basement of the middle school.

While the blood would still need to be washed off the walls, Nate didn't want to come back to a festering hole in the ground.

The quickest way to carry 17 dead bodies was to open a set of hatch doors connected to the basement, which allowed suppliers and delivery drivers to slide giant items that couldn't be carried down through the doors, and pull the bodies up with rope. After clearing the doors, they could see straight to the street.

He tied a rope around their chest, under their arms, and then tied the other end to Curie's frame, and then they towed each body up to the surface.

Emerging from Vault 75 and the Malden Middle School, the air was filled with smoke as most of the Medford Medical Hospital was on fire now, with nothing being done to abate the fire, it would burn and smolder for days.

\111/

They found Joe Savoldi's relative in a classroom, desks piled up against the windows, door bashed in, bullet holes all around the walls. Shots through the window, and then whoever came through after them knocked the door in to finish off whoever was left alive.

Still clutching a Laser Musket and wearing his militia hat was Savoldi. The flesh was gone, bones nibbled on by cockroaches and rats, but there was not much else indication of any other Minutemen in all of Malden. The uniform was similar to Preston's, though faded and worn from left to sit out in the elements.

The Battle Joe Salvodi described, and what remained of the fight were two completely different worlds. If there were more Minutemen in the area, they packed up what they could and left a long time ago.

Curie and Nate were both dirty, Nate felt the oil and blood soaking into his hands, everything felt greasy no matter how much he wiped them off. Curie needed maintenance after helping Nate fight the Super Mutants and Gunners, since she was bleeding hydraulic fluid around the seems in her frame.

With plenty of daylight, Nate picked the next spot South of them where they could accomplish the most and recover, walking south to the National Guard Depot.

Next Chapter: Ch. 63 The Big Dig Estimated time remaining: 16 Hours, 14 Minutes