Begin Recording

Mountaintop

Recording by Scribe Ellison

The elevator went down and started back up, moving more quickly because it was empty. I waited another minute.

Behind me a familiar voice intoned, "And the devil took him up to a high place and showed him all the kingdoms of the Earth and the glory of them. All this I will give to you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me."

I turned, smiling. "The first Valentine read the Good Book?"

"I think just the quotable parts." Nick came out to stand with me at the edge of the deck. "How you holding up?"

"I..." I was feeling very wobbly all of a sudden, physically and mentally. Right on schedule. I swayed and Nick took my arm to keep me steady, and with his other hand tipped my chin up to see my eyes.

"Your pupils are tiny. How much Med-x have you had today?"

"Some. A lot. Possibly too much. Is everything all right at home? My kids?"

"Are fine. Believe it or not the Minutemen can hold things together for a few weeks without you."

Nick steered me inside and I let myself lean on his shoulder. He smelled like cigarette smoke and old plastic and home and safety and that was all it took to make me fall apart completely. Then for a while Nick let me stand with my face against his shoulder while I shivered and made little choking whimpering noises and said, "I didn't think anyone would come." a few times even though it wasn't true.

All the while a tiny voice in the back of my head was remembering the pamphlet the army had sent home with Nate. Your Returning Service-member may have experienced traumatic events while protecting our great nation! He may suffer from nightmares, mood swings, even total breakdown! Mild symptoms can usually be treated with wifely patience and love! If symptoms persist, ask your doctor about Med-Tek's line of shellshock treatment chems! Nate had read it and laughed, but I know he and his army buddies had some long talks late at night.

When I came out of that it felt like waking up though I didn't think I'd been asleep. At some point Nick had bundled me in a blanket and installed me on the sofa and he was scavenging the overboss quarters. "Plenty of alcohol but you don't want that on top of med-x, some prewar canned food, some mystery meat, think it's molerat. I'm heating up some real food. You back with me?"

"Don't tell Ellie I was hanging on you." Was what my brain decided was most important thing to say. I realized I still had my armor on and stood up long enough to get out of it, keeping my weapons within reach, and sat back down. I'd sleep here, the idea of using Colter's bed made my skin crawl.

"Oh, Ellie understands I can have a shoulder for a friend but only have eyes for her. Feeling a little better?"

Nick handed me a mug of hot camp food: grain, dried carrots and jerky boiled into a kind of salty porridge. It's delicious after a long day and I dug in. "Better. Some. I have had a lot of chems. How did you get here? How did you get in here?"

He put down some sealed cans of water on the table and sat down on the other sofa. "Your friend Deacon and I followed your party's route, then we ran into Dogmeat and he showed us the rest of the way. We ambushed a couple of raiders for their clothes and got into the park just in time to join the crowd at the arena. We heard where you'd be and I got up here in time to wait for you. Colter had a couple mannequins set up in a corner so I just got behind 'em, took my shirt off and held real still. Gage never saw me."

"Deacon's here?" Oh, that was good news!

"Still at the market. Trying to borrow a Geiger counter which I think means he's looking for more of his mysterious friends." As if Nick didn't know exactly who Deacon's friends were. Nick is smart enough to catch on to a lot of the Railroad's signals, and polite enough to pretend he doesn't.

I nodded. "He knows where we are?"

"We were in the stands behind that man—Gage?-when he gave you the little speech in the arena, then all we had to do was find out where the Overboss lives. I'm sure he'll be here soon. We left our four-legged friend outside the walls with an oddball group holed up in a diner. They're strange but friendly."

Dogmeat has nine lives like a cat. I know he can handle himself, but I was glad to hear he wasn't out in the wild.

The indoor elevator dinged and I instantly had my pistol out, but turning to face it wrenched my side and sudden pain made me see stars.

"Don't shoot, it's only me."

"Deacon, finally." Nick said.

"Ow, ow, ow… that's a new look, Deacon."

"I fit right in. My raider name is 'Shades.'"

Nick and I made the exact same snorting noise. Deacon was head-to-toe in basic raider gear, lots of stained leather and armor made of street signs, and he'd added a fake scar across his head. The scary getup did not match his expression of concern; I must've looked pretty bad.

But no matter how I looked or felt, "We have to plan. I can't walk home… and now I'm..."

Deacon took over, "You're the Overboss and that's our chance to really scout this place and make a plan to take out these raiders. I don't think you've got enough Minutemen for a frontal assault on this place but if my friends unlocked all the collars and armed the slaves first..."

Nick managed to look like he was raising an eyebrow without really having eyebrows. "Did 'we' decide we need to kill the raiders? I'm always on board for taking out the trash, but that's a tall order for three people when one of them is injured."

"No, Deacon's right." I said. I had my eyes closed and was grateful Deacon had said everything. "It's too close to the Commonwealth, they're going to be raiding us. We have to… and you can't stay here Nick… I'm really tired..."

"And slurring your words." Nick said. "Go to sleep."

Begin Recording

Overboss

Recording by Scribe Ellison

It was late afternoon, dinnertime, when I left the market. The setting sun stabbed my eyes and I could feel a headache massing behind the effect of all the chems.

Luckily Fizztop Mountain was very visible and I stumped towards it wobbling on the medical brace on my foot. I wanted that thing off and soon because it was scary knowing I couldn't run. If the raiders just hanging out here decided to come at me… but they didn't. I got some stares from behind masks and facepaint but nothing more. Maybe Gage ordered them to give the new overboss a chance.

The mountain was big, not a skyscraper but imposing and it cast a long shadow across the park. A fake mountain with a giant bottle leaning against it, all made of crumbling fiberglass. Through the holes where the fake stone had fallen in I could see darkness and bits of the steel structure the mountain was built on. Something stank, the distant charnel smell of bodies hauled not quite far enough away.

Looking up I could see what must be the restaurant, a curving balcony coming off the side of the fake mountain. And there was the elevator, I just about walked into the cables because I was walking while looking up. I hit the button to bring the lift down. An even more rickety raider-built platform than others I've seen, but once off the ground I was safe from being mobbed. And there was a glimpse of a spectacular view before the lift reached the top and I had to turn to look into the restaurant.

Overboss Colter had not been a tidy occupant. There was trash on the floor and leftover food on plates on the long buffet counter where, before the war, people would have sat to eat. The commercials on TV had mentioned five-star dining but this place had booths and couches and looked more like a gimmick place where you could watch the chefs make your food or something. No diners were here now, just Gage, still in his yellow armor, sitting at the counter with a gun in pieces in front of him. He heard the elevator arrive and stood up to face me.

"You look like the Gauntlet chewed you up and spit you out but seeing as you're the only one to ever walk out I guess I can't complain. Welcome home, boss! These digs're yours now. Hope you like the look. Colter had some peculiar tastes."

Gage gestured around to the prewar abstract art on the walls and several human animatronics, plastic human shapes set out like statues with weapons and clothes draped over them. I muttered, "Peculiar is right. What's with the mannequins?"

"Fuck if I know. Colter hauled them up here from all over the park, used to put clothes on 'em and leave them at the edge to see if anybody took potshots." Gage gestured off the edge of the balcony and added, "But the view is somethin', huh?"

I turned, and it really was. The market was below, the center of the park and a sludgy pond, and beyond the front gates empty land went on forever.

"It's all yours, boss. Everything you see is under your control now."

I turned away from the edge and sat on a stool at the counter, glad to get the weight off my ankle, and looked up at Gage. "I still don't get it, why put me in charge? Talk to me, Gage, tell me what I've gotten myself into."

And Gage was happy to oblige. He slouched back on his stool and said, "You may have noticed that our former Overboss, Colter, was a real asshole. And that's me being nice. Ended up being poison for this whole operation. Way I see it, surviving the Gauntlet means you've got what it takes."

"You helped me in the Gauntlet." I pointed out.

"Yeah, I did. Look, I'll be honest with you, this operation needed someone to take the reins and it sure as shit ain't gonna be me. Hell, there's already some blamin' me for supporting Colter all this time. My talents are best put to use helping a new Overboss get all this shit under control, you get me?"

Even my chem-addled brain could read that. I raised an eyebrow. "So, are you just going to paint the bullseye directly on my back or what?"

Gage chuckled. "Ain't gonna lie, that's part of the reason you won't see me stepping up and running things. But I'm telling you, it ain't gonna be that bad. I can fix what's gone wrong here, but I need your help."

Behind Gage was a set of double doors, standing open to a large indoor room. Maybe open to air it out; an unpleasant smell of male sweat and distant rot seeped out on the air. The lights weren't on but I could see more animatronic dummies standing creepily in the darkness. How did Colter sleep at night? I shook off the moment of distraction and asked Gage, "What did go wrong?"

He smiled, gestured out at the view again, "Nuka-world. That was the dream. Huge, built like a goddamn fortress. You run this, the world is yours..."

And I thought how different the size of the world can be depending where you're looking from.

"We had a good start on it, Colter and me. Hell of a lot of work went into getting the Disciples, the Operators and the Pack to work together, but we got here. 'Bout a year ago we push in through the front gate, take over Nuka-town, get these traders under our thumb. But then, well, Colter got lazy. He was content to sit on his ass up here, never put in the effort to finish taking the rest of the park. Gangs got restless, started pissing each other off. It was… is… a real mess."

As he spoke Gage turned back to finish oiling and cleaning his gun and I absently started emptying the pouches of my gun harness, counting bullets, "You held this place for a year? Impressive."

"Yeah, but it ain't gonna keep much longer. It was little shit at first. Heated tempers, arguments, the occasional shooting. Got worse over time though. Gangs started staking out as much territory as they could, all being on top of each other like this. Started looking for excuses to turn on each other. If somethin' ain't done soon to settle things down it's gonna reach a point there ain't no comin' back from."

"And you think I can do that."

"Yeah, I've heard about you. In charge of the Minutemen, ain't'tcha? You took those has-beens and pulled half the Commonwealth together and now you're sittin' pretty right on top with those saps followin' your every order. So I know you got ambition. So, you in?"

I had a sudden coughing fit to cover—I'm not sure what. Laughter maybe, or unwise words like 'you've clearly never met the Minutemen.' Because the only time anyone follows my every order is when there's no time to discuss at length what the orders should be.

My attention was again caught by the creepy animatronics in Colter's back room. I swear one of them was smiling. Colter had put a hat on that one. And a tan trenchcoat.

It was definitely smiling.

Suddenly the world was a much better place.

It had only been a moment. I turned back to Gage, "Yes. I'm in—but I'm hurt and I need to sleep off all the jet the doctor gave me. I want to know everything about the gangs, and what you want to do to take the rest of the park, but—tomorrow?"

"Right. Sensible." Gage sounded relieved and quickly put his gun back together. "I'll come back in the morning—well, morning raider time which means early afternoon—and we'll get started. The plumbing's good up here and the water in the faucets is clean. Both elevators lock. I warned the gangs off you but someone might get frisky."

"Thanks." I said, sloppily happy and probably smiling a very strange smile. The head-clearing chem Mackenzie gave me was definitely wearing off. "Bring me a map of Nuka-world if you can. Need to know what we have to work with."

Gage arched his visible eyebrow, surprised, and did a little salute as he stepped onto the elevator. "You got it, boss. I look forward to working with you."