2277/08/18 - Bodies, Isle 12

The trip to Super-Duper Mart was pretty uneventful. I got into a short fight with a dog, but after a few whacks from my baseball bat, it decided to try and find a meal elsewhere. It was around three in the afternoon when I came across the place. Hard to miss, given how barren the rest of the area is. It wasn't until I walked around to the front of the building that I realized how far up shit creek I was.

The parking lot was empty except for a few old cars. Somebody had climbed up the old lamps and.. hung bodies from them. I can't begin to figure out who would, or why, but they did. They didn't look terribly fresh.. like the ones hanging from the front of Super-Duper Mart itself. Even after all the shit I'd gone through, it seems like the world has another little surprise waiting to show me. At least the doors were unlocked.

I found out why soon enough. The place was dark as hell; most of the big windows in front were boarded up or painted over. If I hadn't heard some of them talking, I might have not noticed until I was being prepared for hanging myself. The place was crawling with raiders, as Moira told me they were called much later. Okay, crawling is a bit of an exaggeration. There were a few wandering around.. one of which seemed to be on guard duty, pacing back and forth on planks set up across the top of the old shelves.

I slipped into the shadows as well as I could and pulled out my pistol. I wasn't about to start trouble of my own, but I didn't want to be caught unarmed if one of them saw me. Let me tell you.. making my way along the edge of the store was something I'd rather not repeat any time soon. Every time I heard those heavy footsteps on the planks above me, I thought I was a goner.

There was a little open office at the far end. The place was a mess, but it looked like they were at least trying to put it back together. Maybe when they got bored with all the nasty things Moira's told me raiders like to do. I hadn't had the balls to try and grab some food on my way across the place; most of it looked like old, dented cans that probably expired before I was born. There was a little squirrelled away in the office, though, and there weren't any raiders around to miss it until I was long gone. One thing I did find that looked like fun was a couple grenades.

Entering a back hallway, I crept through the collected garbage and debris until I found a second sort of area.. might have been some kind of pharmacy or something back before the war. Just around the corner I could see a couple raiders laying out on mattresses and one leaning on a wall smoking. It was kind of comical, in a dark way, to see a guy smoking through a hockey mask so calmly with bodies hanging from the ceiling and all.

Back in that first office, I decided to make a little diversion. Don't ask me why.. I can't even remember now while I'm writing this. My dad used to get so pissed when I'd do something like this.. just up and cut class or give Butch five across the jaw for calling Amata fat.. Anyway, I threw a grenade as far across the store as I could. It was dark enough that I don't think any of them saw it before it landed, and naturally exploded. When I made it back to the pharmacy, all three of them had left to see what the hell was going on.

I grabbed what I could; some ammo, both 10mm and decidedly not 10mm, a magazine, some detergant - I was grabbing anything I could find, figuring I'd sort it out later, once I was safe. It wouldn't have mattered what I grabbed if I got killed, right? I heard some of them coming back, so I slipped into a storage room that was empty. Well, mostly empty.. if you didn't count the big metal tube in the corner with the glowing light and the robot inside.

I had no idea how long it was until they decided to search in here, so I ran to the tube to try and pry it open. All the important-looking bits just led to a little computer console on a desk near it. Now, I've never been good at hacking computers, regardless of how simple those Vault-Tec people made it. The longer it took, the more desperate I got, just punching in strings of characters, some of which might not have been actual words. I must have gotten something right, because just before a worrysome sizzle ripped through the console, the big tube slid open.

Out trundled what announced itself as the Super-Duper Mart's maintenance 'bot. While trying to navigate what was left of the storage room, it knocked over a set of shelves, making enough noise to alert the raiders as to where I was. While I tried to hide myself between the curve of the robot's tube and the wall, the door was kicked open. No word of a lie, the maintenance robot asked the raider to see his employee ID.

The raider was probably as confused as I was; he even let the maintenance 'bot ask a second time. That's when the robot muttered something about the area being "restricted" and just about cut the guy in half with an arm-laser.

What happened next.. I'm not terribly sure of now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off. I remember waiting for the mech to leave the room and then made a break for it. At one point, the raider on guard duty saw me and was about to open fire before a line of red light cut both of his arms off near the elbow. I threw myself through the doors to the place and didn't stop running until I was back inside the gates of Megaton.