We made our way to the building Brent had pointed out.

"We need supplies," he told me. "I suppose you don't know what a SuperMart is, Vault Boy?"

I didn't and said as much.

"I'm guessing you had stores in your vault?"

I thought hard. I could only remember the cafeteria. I was pretty sure any other things we needed were simply supplied by the Overseer and brought to our dorm rooms directly.

"Okay then", Brent started after thinking some. "It's most like your canteen. You pick your goods, you pay for them."

We didn't pay for anything in the vault but I let him continue.

"The Mart has rows of shelves and chillers, you go around with a cart, pick up whatever you want and as long as you got enough money at the checkout it's yours to take away.

And it's not just food. Cigarettes, beer, meds, clothes, furniture… If you want it, they got it."

He stopped for a moment before realising something.

"Of course, that was before the war…"

He suddenly looked very lonely. I put a hand on his shoulder. I would have said he was all skin and bone, if he had any skin…

Brent pulled himself together and headed toward the SuperMart.

"Alright, we go in quietly. Raiders love to hang out in places like this", he warned.

We went to the nearest entrance and Brent slowly opened one of the doors until there was enough of a gap for him to peek through.

He opened the door wider once he was satisfied and ushered me through.

As he closed the door behind us, I looked around.

We were in a square room that turned out to be the cart parking area.

"Store's through those doors", Brent gestures to a set of double doors in front of us.

I spotted a Nuka Cola machine and pointed it out to Brent.

He jimmied the lock and we grabbed the contents of five bottles.

We opened the door into the store proper.

I heard laughter and hoots coming from deeper inside.

"But baby, I love you"

"Keep dreaming asshole. You touch my tits again I'll cut your fucking hands off and eat them"

"Hey Spike, you got more chance of screwing a molerat than Freija!"

More laughter.

By this time we had snuck in and closed the door.

We started checking the shelves for goods.

Dandy Boy Fancy Snacks.

Salisbury Steak.

Cram.

Sugar Bombs (this one made Brent's eyes widen. I had no idea what was so appealing about them).

Mirelurk cakes.

We carried on and found a separate area with waist height partitions and a sign above telling us this was the "customer service" counter.

We ducked under the counter at a gap and looked around.

The Raiders must have been using this as their ammo stash as their were crates of it everywhere.

"5.56, 7.72, 10mm, frag grenades…" Brent muttered away as he sifted through the ammo crates.

I pulled a weird looking weapon off a shelf.

"What's this", I hissed.

Brent looked like I'd handed him a bar of gold.

"Laser rifle. Do not lose that baby", he breathed. "Aha…"

Brent turned around with a key in his hand.

"The Mart Pharmacy key. We should be able to find some meds".

We worked our way around the outer perimeter of the store until we approached the "delicatessen" counter. This was where all the voices were coming from.

Brent peeked over the counter, took a look around then lowered his head.

"This seems to be their den", he whispered.

We crawled on all fours under the height of the counter until we were at the other side than got to our feet and walked quickly in a crouch to avoid them seeing us.

"Hey, you hear about Machine's crew taking that bitch's head and hands? 'Parently she was screaming even after they'd cut her head off. That is fucked up man"

The voice giggled hysterically.

I was ready to turn around and grab the bastard when Brent grabbed me instead.

"Do not," he hissed. "They are jacked up on Buffout and Psycho. They'll just rip you apart".

I considered this for a long few seconds. Brent looked at me with earnest.

Eventually I just nodded and continued on our way to the pharmacy.

We found the door to the pharmacy and Brent led us inside.

As I was trying to make out my surroundings, I heard Brent breathe a curse.

I froze. "What is it"?

After a tense period I heard Brent start to breathe again.

"Protectron", he whispered. "But its in hibernation mode".

"What in Steel is a Protectron?" I demanded.

"Robot security guards, made before the war. Their fission reactors and positronic brains survived the nuclear fallout and just kept on going. Tough bastards. If this one was awake, it'd have fried us by now."

We edged around the Protectron unit and headed into the pharmacy shelves.

We found a mattress on the floor with the remains of a human body spread eagled on it, its hands, feet and head removed and entrails spilling from its gut. We couldn't even determine its gender, it was so heavily mutilated.

"This is just a hobby to them", Brent informed me. "When they mean it, it's even worse".

I couldn't imagine how until I glanced out of the pharmacy and saw they'd mutilated one of their own women and chained her remains up to hang from the ceiling with a hook pierced through her sternum and another that I didn't want to even think about lower down. That's when we stumbled across another mattress, this time with a live Raider on it.

We tried to edge around but I guess she'd felt our presence because she started to wake up.

Brent didn't even pause. He pulled a knife from it's sheath, clamped his hand across her mouth and plunged the knife into her chest off to the left.

She struggled weakly for a moment and then fell still.

"Straight in the heart", Brent pointed out. "More mercy than that poor bastard got", he indicated the other mattress, "or than any of them deserve but we don't have time".

We found a good number of Med-X syrettes, Jet, Psycho, Buffout, Rad-X and Radaway.

We stuffed the lot into our back packs and decided it was time to make our exit.

We got within 3 feet of the door when we heard footsteps behind us.

I turned around to see a male Raider wearing nothing but his stained undershorts. That was aside from his .308 hunting rifle.

"WHAAAAT?" He yelled in disbelief at the fact anyone had dared to rob the robbers (and torturers and killers).

I was scared to death but I still had the laser rifle in my hands.

I aimed as quickly as I could and hit him in the midriff.

I watched, completely shocked, as his body vaporised in front of my eyes. All that was left were floating ashes.

We could hear hoots and shouts from the other end of the store so we got out as quick as we could.

They were coming!