Crawled Out Through The Fallout

Chapter 31

I pushed open the red door carefully with my gun barrel. I stopped in the entryway and listened. There was a staircase right in the hall, and there were Raiders behind the stairwell and on the second floor. I aimed at the ones I could see and shot them down one by one as they began to shout taunts. A Raider ran at me with a pool cue raised and swung. I ducked out of the way of his swing, then shot him in the back. He immediately died.

"When will they learn it's a terrible idea to come after someone who has a gun with a pool cue? Idiots."

I looted the corpses and walked into the first room. There was blood and dead bodies everywhere. I heard Deacon gag behind me.

"Not much gets to me, but that's disgusting."

I nodded in agreement. I walked over to a mostly complete body and searched it. There was a calling card on it. I walked around the room and looked at all the paintings hanging on the walls. There was one that looked slightly tilted, so I reached up to fix it. As soon as I had the painting in my hand, it fell to the floor and revealed as wall safe. I busted out my bobby pins and screwdriver to pick the lock. It was difficult and I broke plenty of bobby pins before it clicked open. I took everything inside without really looking at it.

"So I guess we're done here. Pickman is messed up, bad."

We walked outside.

"Let's head back to Goodneighbor and tell Hancock about what we found."

I set the destination and fast travelled. When we got to Goodneighbor, I pushed open the door to the old statehouse and walked up the spiral staircase. Hancock was sitting on one of the couches with Jet in his hand.

"There she is, my little explorer. What'd you find?"

I ignored his initial comment and told him all about the gallery.

"It was awful. Bodies everywhere. Pickman used them for his... 'art'."

I did air quotes as I said art. Deacon added his opinion.

"It was gross, I gagged."

Hancock nodded.

"I'll put the word out to avoid that place. Here's what I owe you for doing that for me."

He tossed me a bag full of caps. Based on weight, I guessed it was around 100 caps. I nodded to him and walked out, pulling Deacon along with me. I assumed Tinker Tom would be about finished with decoding the Courser's chip, so we walked over to the Old North Church. When we walked into Railroad HQ, we saw Desdemona and Tinker Tom huddled around the terminal. We stood near them and listened as Tinker Tom told us what he found.

"There's a code on the chip, like a frequency code, that should help you get into the Institute. I put it on this holotape."

He handed to me, and I put it in my bag.

"We need to get back to Virgil, he can help us use what you found. We'll see you guys later."

We began the long walk back to Sanctuary Hills.