The raider collapsed in the street, skidding across the pavement with a fresh scorched hole through his chest. Preston Garvey had made his first shot count, but a hail of return fire from the raider's "friends" ensured that it would be the last careful shot he'd get. There was functionally no cover on the balcony of the Museum of Freedom, just some weathered old white wooden rails. Every step and shift made the balcony groan under Preston's weight, leading him to question what might kill him first; ailing architecture, or the raiders? Still; Preston's perch turned Concord's entire main road into a killing field. The fact that the raiders were terrible shots didn't hurt his odds, either.
A spray of poorly placed shotgun rounds and a few stray thirty-eights peppered the wood around Preston, coating him in a fresh layer of ancient white flaking paint and two hundred years worth of dust. He barely flinched, though he found he needed to squint an eye as he grabbed the crank of his musket and ratcheted it forward for a fresh round. Shouldering the rifle, he tried to count how many were approaching.
"Five in the street…" Preston muttered, the laser musket kicking in his hand as it uttered its air-shredding roar. A bolt of red sailed from his vantage point into the brain of a raider who'd been lining up a far more careful shot with an old bolt action rifle. Two dead that fast gave even junkies pause to think; the four remaining in the street dove for cover wherever they could find it.
Preston cranked another round, taking the split second his accurate fire awarded him to try and count how many of these bastards were trying to kill him. He looked southward- to his left- and found a group of ten or more flanking the long way around Concord. No doubt they were trying to approach the museum from behind. Close enough to see, maybe, but far out of his range. Regardless, he'd have some time before they were on him.
He shouldered the laser musket and took only vague aim at one of the raiders peeking up from behind a sandbag. The musket roared; a sandbag burst. The raider's peeking head disappeared back behind his cover. Further up the main road, Preston saw five more making their way in. "How many of you-"
Flash. A shot splintered the rail near Preston's leg; a shot missing him by inches. Preston flinched in earnest that time as he glanced down to the hole through his coat. He grabbed at his rifle's crank again, though discovering the raider's shot had been so glancing made his gun just a bit heavier. The near-hit came from the rooftop of an old hardware store just across from the museum. How'd I miss seeing him? Preston scolded internally as he raised the rifle up again. To his dismay, the raider was quicker on the pull than he was. Another flash. This one was wide, hitting the wall a good five feet from Preston, but the gunshot made him flinch all the same. Preston fired back; his own shot was wild, sailing over the head of the flanking sniper and traveling onward into the western horizon.
Preston crouched below the railing, as illogical as that was seeing as how it offered him about as much protection as a dead bush. He cranked once, twice this time. The laser musket didn't just hum in his arms, but rattled. He glanced down through the railing to see the four surviving raiders still in their cover. A well trained soldier might take advantage of this distraction. Thankfully for Preston, only a handful of these raiders- at best- had ever fought someone who wasn't completely helpless.
The five raiders further up the road had arrived to the fight, one of them- some stocky sunburnt man with rusting metal armor and a white mohawk Preston could spot even from all the way down the street- began to shout commands and wave orders at the raiders still cowering. Preston only saw that much before another round took off the railing by his head, coating his tricorn in shards of wood.
Preston desperately blinked, trying to glance through teary eyes at the sniper on the opposing roof. They were firing wildly, trying to suppress him. It's working, Preston thought with frustration and shame. His body and mind briefly battled; instinct fought against discipline. Instinct told him to just dive back through the door he'd come from, take the fight deeper into the Museum. Training told him to kill that damned sniper, in that it might buy him some time. In the end, training won.
Rifle shouldered, Preston Garvey let loose a charged shot, just as the opposing sniper popped out of cover to rest the barrel of his own gun along the low brick wall of the hardware store's roof. The shot went slightly low, but the extra charge had its desired effect. The laser punched through the brick, catching the raider somewhere in the gut. Preston wasn't sure if his shot had enough charge to land a killing blow through cover, but it landed enough of a blow to send the sniper reeling. Good enough.
Cranking once more, Preston glanced southward. The group of ten making a wide flank were gone. Can't worry about that now Preston thought, willfully ignoring the fact that he was outgunned twenty to one- at least, until he spotted the raiders he couldn't see made those odds even more grim. Preston trained his rifle down the road, aiming his iron sights on the white-haired junkie fiend popping off orders. Preston fired, the round missing the mohawked raider and, instead, shattering a window farther down the road.
Still, it was enough to send the approaching five raiders scattering. Preston was awarded only a moment of pride before his perch was riddled with suppressive fire from down below. Bullets and pellets, once more, shredded the railing and walls around him. Preston grit his teeth, training and instinct again fighting for dominance of his actions. Cranking a fresh round, he waited a second for the covering fire to wane. They didn't stagger their volley; the white haired one had given them the order to suppress Garvey and, like the untrained mob they were, they fired all at once.
As hands flew to bolts to unjam them, as tubes expended spent smoking red casings, as the white-haired one and his gaggle of psychos came out into the open to try to push ahead, Preston took as much of an advantage as he could. He rose, a fresh ploom of ancient paint and dust erupting from him in a cloud. Resting the rifle along the cracked railing, treating the rifle like it was crudely mounted, Preston gripped his right hand on the crank and his left hand on the trigger.
He fired quickly, wildly, treating the musket as if it were some complex puckle gun. Ratchet-BANG. Ratchet-BANG. Ratchet-BANG. Red burst after red burst peppered the street. His first shot caught an unsuspecting club-wielding raider in the thigh, sending him sprawling head-first into a red truck. His fifth shot killed the man that had been shoved into the street after both he and the white-haired commander attempted to seize the same cover behind a lamp post. His tenth shot killed a particularly brave (or particularly stupid or stoned) shotgun wielding raider that had attempted to make a bull rush for the front door of the museum.
One on seventeen; that's a little better. Not that Preston had the time to actually try counting. Finally, by his sixteenth shot, the rifle crank jammed with a protesting click. The gap gave the raiders below the time they needed. Preston saw the bravest among them, which only accounted for a handful, rise from cover. Another hail of inaccurate gunfire, though a sharp sting along Preston's cheek sent him careening onto the floor of the balcony in an attempt to instinctively dodge a shot that'd already wounded him.
The bullet-ridden balcony did not groan this time; it gave a wooden scream under the sudden forceful weight of Preston's descent. Something deep within the old wood cracked. Preston flew a gloved hand up to his cheek, sending a fresh sting across his face. He pulled his fingers away to find there was blood, though only a trickle. "Splinter…" He mumbled under the gunfire. "Splinter got me…" Preston would have felt lucky, but no lucky person ever found themselves as a vanguard in his position. The balcony cracking again underneath him emphasized this point.
Preston rolled onto his belly and crawled as more gunfire poured in. He pressed his hand on the bottom of the door but felt no give. Did I really close it behind me? Preston rolled onto his shoulder, wincing and flinching as his world became a symphony of disharmonious gunfire. The door from the balcony to the museum stood, indeed, closed shut. Preston briefly made to reach for the handle, just to see if he even had the arms length to do so, but a fresh hole inches from his exposed hand suggested that wouldn't be wise.
Preston muttered a quiet curse under his breath, pressed flat against the failing platform, hugging the rifle to his chest. His mind churned with possible ways out of this mess. Another crack- no, three cracks- bellowed from the balcony. He could feel his body jump and shift, his angle on the ground changing as the ground itself began to droop.
The door, or the fall. There were no other options. For a moment, the fall seemed preferable; giving in and letting go at long last. Under an oppressive cloud of bullets, dust, and splintering wood, Preston Garvey closed his eyes. The weight of the last week- if it had even been a week, he'd lost count of the days- crushed him like a killing stone. Watching the Minutemen wither to a nub. Not only failing Quincy, but watching all but Preston pay the ultimate price for that failure. Losing survivor after survivor in this fruitless trek north. I'm going to die here, he thought. It wasn't the dying that blackened his heart; it was that the four survivors still boarded up on the other side of the museum would die with him.
And that was unacceptable.
The door.
Preston coiled his legs and sprung to his feet. The force from the jump caused the balcony to unleash another volley of cracks and dip a heavy twenty or so degrees. Preston almost stumbled backwards, catching himself only by grabbing the handle of the door. Preston felt something heavy thump against his back, but the raiders firing on him were worlds away now. He turned the handle, burst open the door, and threw himself back into the Museum. Behind him, he heard the balcony give way. Its fall ended in a crash and a scream of surprise and pain.
"One on sixteen…" Preston mumbled to himself as he stumbled inside the office that held the remnants of Quincy. He found four terrified pairs of eyes staring back at him.
Sturges looked up from his terminal. "Preston, you're bleedin' buddy." His voice was calm, despite that their doom had just broken through into the first floor two stories below.
Preston touched his cheek. "Just a splinter." He was surprised to find his own voice was calm, as well. He felt like he was shaking, but his hands were steady.
"No," Marcy Long moved from the desk she was sitting on. "Your back-"
Preston waved her off. "They've broken through to the bottom floor. I got a few in the street. Stay away from the windows." Preston crossed the office, cranking another two rounds into the laser musket. He fell upon the window, stumbling as his vision briefly flared white. He glanced down into the lobby of the Museum of Freedom, seeing three raiders cautiously tip-toeing inside as they looked for a path that might lead them up to the third floor office. Preston leaned over the edge, aiming his musket down, and fired.
Preston wasn't sure when the reinforcements that had flanked around the northern part of Concord had arrived, just that everytime he killed a raider it felt like two more took their place; a hydra of monsters wearing the skin of man. Preston had moved from the windows to the door, cutting down anyone that dared to make their way onto the failing hallway that led to the office where he and the Quincy survivors were making their final stand. That had been the true, final chokepoint, what really turned this into a slog. Preston believed he had been shot five more times, though he barely felt the pain anymore.
A raider was shoved through a pair of doors onto the walkway, armed only with a kitchen knife. She looked horrified, trying to turn to run back the way she'd come. An air-rending laser erupted from Preston's musket, causing her left arm to burst into a scorched slurry of blood and bone. It was only then, as three more raiders burst from the doorway, that Preston had realized their gambit; she was bait to draw his fire. Two of the three were armed with blades. The third, a double barreled shotgun. The one with the shotgun leveled a blast that, for all intent purposes, should have killed Preston outright. Instead, it only made the door frame by his head vanish in a blast of smoke and splinters.
Preston steeled himself to lunge forward, to start clubbing the three with his rifle, but was stopped by a pair of hands that yanked him backwards. He fell to the floor, already preparing to crank a fresh round into his musket when he saw Marcy Long shoulder a filing cabinet in front of the door. The impromptu barricade was barely in place before the office door slammed into it with a crushing bang of wood-on-metal. The three raiders struggled against the door, slamming hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Every shouldered check moved the filing cabinet just a few more inches. Marcy threw herself against her barricade, looking backward toward the weeping husk of her husband. "Jun!" She screamed.
Jun only continued to sob, rocking back and forth, cupping his hands over his ears; he was utterly gone from this world. Preston couldn't blame him. He looked up to see Sturges was the one that had pulled him back from his split-second decision to prove that World War Four would be fought with sticks and stones (or at least the stocks of rifles). The pompadour-sporting mechanic was armed with nothing but a wavering neutral expression and an adjustable wrench. "We can still make a run for the roof!" Sturges reached a hand down to help Preston up.
Preston took the offer, though standing reminded Preston that he had a lot less blood in his body than he thought. "But the power armor, it won't run without a fusion core…" Preston muttered. His speech was more slurred than he thought it ought to be.
Sturges nodded. "No, but we can probably push it in front of the door to buy us some time. Maybe turn the gun on the vertibird around, fire at anyone on our tail. Might be able to rip up some boards and jump across to the roof of the church next door in a real pinch. Whatever we do, we can't-"
"Jun!" Marcy screamed as the locker fell over. The door burst open half-way, revealing a raider armed with a bladed tire-iron. Those bloodshot eyes looked past Preston, spotting the old woman still seated on a couch looking toward the door.
"The old lady's in here!" The raider screamed. "I found-"
The laser musket jumped in Preston's hands, putting a hole through the raider, who collapsed past Marcy. She threw herself back against the door as two more raiders attempted to muscle their way through the new opening. Sturges rushed forward, joining Marcy at the barricade just in time to send it slamming shut again as the raider's corpse tumbled into the office. Preston cranked another round. Jumping to the church… Not a bad idea. But someone has to stay behind. There was little question as to who that someone would be, as far as Preston was concerned.
A quiet old voice creeped up from behind Preston Garvey; calm, but fading. "Preston…"
A fresh round cranked. The door burst open again, a hand wielding a crude pipe pistol slipped inside. It sprayed a wild array of bullets around the room before Sturges brought his wrench down on it, breaking both the pistol and the fingers of whomever was holding it. The door slipped shut again, a scream of fury curdling into a scream of pain on the other side.
Preston kept his attention on the door, until that voice came again. "Preston…" There was a tug on the sleeve of his thoroughly-bloodied coat. He turned to look at her. Mama Murphy stared back at him. Her eyes were bloodshot like the raiders; weathered from a life of chem use. Though, there was wisdom in those eyes, too. Crazed, maddening, but wisdom all the same. There, too, was also a grim sadness that Preston had not seen in the old woman before.
"Mama Murphy- Not now. Can you walk? Do you need help getting to the roof?" Preston kept his eyes on the door as he talked, shouldering the musket once it hummed with a fresh round. He could see the end of the barrel glowing slightly, superheated from the amount of rounds he'd fired.
"Preston, trust the dog. Trust dogmeat."
Preston Garvey glanced back at the old woman, a confused and bewildered look in his eyes. "Mama Murphy- We need to get you to the roof-"
With a scream of failing hinges, the door burst open for the final time; a flood of raiders came pouring through. Four muscled their way into the office, armed with blades, guns, and hate. Marcy turned and began to sprint for the door that led to the roof. No- To Jun. She sprinted to Jun. With a wicked cackle and the pull of a trigger, a shotgun cut Marcy Long down before she could reach her husband. She fell inches from Jun Long, who still sat rocking back and forth with his ears covered and his eyes closed.
Sturges took the first raider in the temple, crushing his skull. Brained, yet still alive for those few remaining seconds before the body could realize the damage it's sustained, the dying raider dropped his gun and grabbed Sturges by the wrists, keeping in place. Sturges grunted and struggled as the woman behind the brained raider held her pipe rifle at her hip. She sprayed both the brained raider and Sturges down, sending both into a bloody heap against the terminal-bearing desk. The terminal itself toppled to the floor, the sound of its shattering almost in sync with Preston's rifle, which made short work of the bullet-spraying raider.
"Trust in dogmeat…" Mama Murphy said again, her voice not only calm but somehow cutting through the haze of combat and adrenaline. When she spoke, Preston felt as if time slowed down. Against all sense, he turned to look back at her rather than the two raiders carving their way through the room.
"Mama Murphy!?"
She smiled at him, a ray of aged yellow teeth. Her eyes held with them the crushing burden of destiny. "It should have been them, but they're never gonna wake up again, so it's gotta be you kid." Her smile wavered. "I'm so sorry, Preston."
Eyes locked on Mama Murphy, Preston didn't hear the raider that had killed Marcy charge him. "Who isn't gonna wake-" Preston didn't feel the sting of the sawed off handle hit the side of his head. He only felt the weight of Mama Murphy's gaze, and the vague sensation that he was falling.