Begin Recording

Boston Common

Recording by Scribe Ellison

"This tape is not going to make me look great, scribe. But your librarians want the story and this is the story, so all right.

"It's fine, everyone here has already heard about me freaking out.

"So Piper and I headed for Park Street Station, walking. It was different without Carla's big calm lump of a brahmin along. I never had to hide behind the brahmin, but I think it was in the back of my mind that I could have, and it was comforting to have the big guy plodding along. Piper and I had our eyes and ears and Dogmeat's nose to watch for trouble. We could probably beat a raider or two but not a group of super mutants so our only hope was to avoid them.

"So we passed the Diamond City patrol limit, with the security team waving to Piper and wishing her good luck. We went by daylight because the dark would slow us down more than it would the super mutants and ferals.

"Low and slow, Blue." Piper told me. "We see any greenies we back off. Valentine's a tough guy, if he's lasted this long he can make it a little longer." She whispered to me how to crouch down, place my feet without making noise, hug the buildings to stay out of sight but also stay carefully away from anything that looked about to collapse. Dogmeat could range ahead; from a distance he looked enough like a wild mongrel not to give us away. Of course on top of everything else I was terrified some raider would shoot him for no reason.

"The buildings—I worked in the city, I drove down these streets but now they were falling down with holes in them. All the windows were gone and in some places bits of carpet or something flapped in the breeze. Everything that moved caught my eye, and the buildings creaked frighteningly when the wind blew. I was afraid something would fall on us.

"The remains of Boston aren't silent like the roads. There's nearly constant gunfire and explosions and you can't see where they're coming from because there are buildings in the way. It was very scary.

"We met some raiders, and killed the two that wouldn't stop chasing us, but nothing else went wrong until we got to Boston commons. It was evening by then, all the color washed out of the world. The fence around the Common had been reinforced with scrap wood painted with warnings. Piper said she'd heard there was danger here and with all the warnings we planned to skirt the edge of the common to go around to the station. Even Dogmeat had his ears down and the fur on his back up.

So we'd planned to stay away like sensible people, but there was no sign of anything dangerous. Or any life at all, it had gone silent.

So when I saw one of those yellow trunks the military used for supplies I had to take a look. Piper came too, so that makes Dogmeat smarter than the both of us. We were around by the gate on the corner, near the pond, safely away from the bandstand which seemed like the only place someone could be hiding. I'd heard concerts from that bandstand and taken a swan boat ride when Nate and I were doing all the cliché dating things, but now the pond was clogged with weeds and muck with its boats ruined. Oh, there was a dead body with a smashed head lying nearby, just to make it more obvious that we were being idiots.

I was creeping up, low and slow like Piper said. I glanced up as the capsized swan boat on the pond moved.

Piper whispered, "Blue-"

This thing exploded out of the water, roaring like the end of the world. It was as tall as the bandstand, it was wearing the swan boat on its shoulder—

And something in my head went crack and next thing I know I was huddled in a corner. Inside a building. With no clear memory of how I'd gotten there.

Piper was giving me hell. "Blue, you can't be doing this, what if you ran into a raider gang! Hell!" She cursed some more, I could hear her but she sounded very distant, not half as loud as my gaspy breathing that I couldn't slow down.

That this happened to me was almost as scary as the monster.

Finally Piper wound down and sat down next to me, her stream of curses faded out. "C'mon Blue, snap out of it already."

Dogmeat stuck his cold nose on my wrist and my shaking hand automatically moved to pat him and then I could move. "What was that thing?"

"I think it was a behemoth. That's what happens when a super mutant gets too much of whatever makes it a super mutant. I've never seen one, don't know anyone who has even the guards on The wall."

Behemoth. You've seen one now, and I've seen one other, down in the marshes to the south, it's still there unless it died. Swann is a lot bigger than the one we saw, he's freakishly big even for a freakishly big thing. He's still there too, by the way. Stay out of the Common.

So we sat there for a while until Dogmeat stopped panting and I stopped panting. I finally got my brain together enough to ask wonder, "Where are we?"

Piper said, "Dunno. You ran in here. But it looks like this elevator still works, so we could find out."

Oh. We were in an elevator. Yeah, I hadn't noticed. I looked out—long hallway with a carpet that was still deep red after two hundred years. Tasteful chairs and tables. The walls were still solid. "That thing didn't follow us?"

"Barely left the pond before it turned back." Piper got up and dusted herself off. She held out a hand. "Look on the bright side, Blue—you didn't shit your pants, and neither did I."

I sort of laughed, I still felt pretty awful. Adrenaline will save your life but then it hands you the bill.

The elevator did still work, and took us up to the second floor. I went right to the window and looked out, happy to see no sign of the monster. The pond rippled ominously but the square was empty. I looked around to see where we were. Somewhere real nice, it turned out. The tables were all inlaid wood and the chairs were covered in velvet. And skeletons. A lot of people had died sitting in chairs or at the tables, or leaning over the bar. The bar still had a shine when Piper ran a finger down it. There were lots of empty glasses and bottles with nothing but dried residue in the bottom. "I don't think we should drink anything here."

Piper was checking out the bar. "Too bad. They left some good stuff."

Looking around at the suits on the bodies I had an idea where we were, and the engraving on the wine glasses confirmed it. "I think this is the Boyleston Club. A bar for rich old men, no ordinary people or women allowed. Some of the senior lawyers I knew were members, the ones who were rich old men." It occurred to me then that I might know some of the bodies in the room. After two hundred years they'd been reduced to skeletons in suits so the only way I could know would be to go through the corpses' pockets. I wasn't sure if that would be respectful or the opposite. The faces of the richest senior lawyers I knew went through my mind.

Piper laughed at my words, "And here we are, women! This terminal still works, if I can guess the password."

I thought about it. "Try… 'compound interest.'"

"Well whaddaya know. There's a safe, and there's a tape in here." Piper hit a few keys and went to check out the safe while the tape played. It was a recording of the final toast. 'To the world that was. Mankind will never see its like again.' My panic-fried brain decided it was time to cry, hearing that while surrounded by bodies and looking out at night falling over the ruins of this place I'd known when it was green and beautiful. So I'm frantically wiping my eyes and trying to swallow the lump in my throat to keep some shred of dignity in front of Piper.

She came back with the contents of the safe: a pile of money, someone's gold pocket watch set with diamonds, and a bottle of whiskey as pretty as a big perfume bottle, topped with gold foil and red ribbon and actual sealing wax. "Think this one's safe." Piper said, unsealed it, and poured two shots.

If ever there was a time for drinking, that was it. We clinked glasses and Piper's hand was shaking as much as mine was, which made me feel immensely better. The alcohol helped too.

Dogmeat jumped up on a sofa, nosed aside the bones of the previous occupant, and lay down with a sigh. Piper said we should rest for a few hours, calm ourselves down and give the monster time to forget about us. We took another half a shot each then Piper capped the bottle and put it away. We ate dinner from our packs and with no sign of life outside, Piper chose a chair and I squeezed in next to my dog and we took naps.