His brain took a mont to catch up with the scene in front of him as the standing corpse turned around, its patchy horribly near-skinless body in full glory before him, its nose was gone and it was completely bald. But most of all it seed as feral as an animal. No worse. Like a monster.
It was now that he rembered feral ghouls. He didn't hear enough about them to narrate on what they were just that they were hostile to everyone that wasn't also a ghoul. Adam was not.
The standing one charged him at full speed growling and making vocalizations that scared him as he pulled his rifle off his chest and aid it.
Bam. His shot fired wide, his haste made him miss what should have been an easy shot. But he still had so distance. He pulled the bolt back, pushed it forward, and fired again, this ti when the ghoul was only 5 feet from him.
Bam. Its head popped like a waterlon, sending gore all over. But Adam didn't have ti to think, the other feral ghouls in the area were getting up, one even crawling, and they looked pissed.
Bam. He fired again, once more popping the head of the ghoul he hit, but they were all up now, too close for comfort. Quickly, he let drop the rifle, it fell slack until it hit the tension limit of the strap that Adam had slung over his body, hitting him in the stomach a bit as it swung inwards. anwhile Adam wasted no ti pulling out his pistol and beginning to open fire.
Round after round after round. Adam had no ti for trigger discipline, he was just firing. And it was doing less than he hoped. There were more feral ghouls here than he expected, way more. He took out the few slumped ones in the tube near him easily enough. But more kept erging from the dark, their growls and guttural noises overlapping and reverberating down the long tube he was in. But he didn't stop shooting.
Even after he ran out of ghouls to hit within the light that illuminated the small section of the sewers, he kept firing down the tube, hoping to hit any that he could, slow them down at least. Then he heard the worst sound he could.
Click. His gun was out.
"FUCK." Adam vocalized loudly as he realized the situation was no longer in his favor, the feral ghouls were already beginning to erge from the darkness charging at him with reckless abandon.
Adam made a quick decision. He threw the 10mm pistol behind him, back the way he ca and drew the Laser Pistol from his bag. He then resud firing down the path without stopping, with the added benefit of the red laser being emitted lighting up the hall enough that he could see the hoard encroaching on him. But even during this he was not idle.
From the mont Adam had drawn his laser pistol he was already backing up. Back through the gate that he stepped through into this nightmare. As soon as his laser pistol fired through the entire fusion cell it already had in it, he slamd the door full force.
The feral ghouls were within sight now, seconds away from getting him. He had no more ti to waste, he picked up the chain on the ground and quickly wrapped it around the bars of the Gate and the door to the gate, effectively sealing it shut with a knot. No sooner had he finished doing this were the feral ghouls at the gate, their arms sticking through like so sort of horror movie.
Adam was quick to jump back, watching as the small mass of feral ghouls reached through the bars at him. It was terrifying. Adam watched for a mont, as they fruitlessly reached for him, unable to recognize that their efforts would be in vain. He still knew very little about them. He was extra careful the entire ti not to let them get close as, if they were like zombies in a zombie movie he had watched back in the day, one bite might make him one too. He didn't want to risk it. He knew they were dangerous, that was enough for him.
He sighed in relief as the ferals kept making threatening guttural sounds from the other side of the gate as he turned around to grab his 10mm off the ground where it landed. In a more ideal situation he would have holstered it. But he was skilled with a gun, he was not a gunslinger, he had no confidence in himself in that mont to reholster the gun swiftly and grab the laser pistol, he knew there was a high likelihood of him, fumbling it, and this was no situation for that, so he decided throwing it was the safer option, because he had always intended on retreating.
Still, it was not exactly good for his gun to be thrown so hard and carelessly. But it was a sturdy weapon, if that was enough to break it it wouldn't have been nearly as popular.
Grabbing it off the gross caked-in gri on the floor he reholstered it, gave one last look at the ferals still reaching through the bars, and then turned to head back the way he ca. There were, afterall, many other paths he passed. This one happened to lead him to trouble.
Doubling back proved to be a boon in disguise as, after taking the first turn that he passed up on behind him, he was t with, only a few minutes later, a ladder leading topside. The sewer grate was gone, letting in the dim light of the near full moon pour down through the hole and giving Adam a clear view of what he had been looking for this whole ti.
However, before he headed to the ladder, he noticed sothing that caught his eye right next to it. It was a man, of course dead, but the man was in a full suit of power armor, minus the helt. He was slumped on the ground, his back to the wall.
Adam approached, curious. The man seed clean shaven with a short buzz cut. The armor itself seed to be a T-45d variant, the most common kind, but on the chest was emblazoned a red emblem of a sword with so wings and behind it so gears inside a circle that was ford by the wings. He didn't recognize the emblem, nor had he heard anything about such a symbol. It was minor overall. Afterall it could simply be soone who put their own graffiti on the power armor suit once they found it and fixed it up. Power armor did make you feel invincible after all, it wasn't too far fetched. But despite the dopamine rush one couldn't forget that power armor was not, in fact, invincible, as evidenced by the man here. It was interesting though, and raised a number of more questions. Questions that could certainly wait until later.
For now he simply reached his hand to the small space behind the back of the power armor, checking to see if the fusion core was still there. Unfortunately it was not. Taken, most likely.
Adam could only sigh. It was a sha, if he had kept the power core he sold to Chuck before he might have been able to get this suit moving enough to get it to a place where he could work on it. A power armor station would be ideal but he could technically fix it anywhere once it was upright. But without a fusion core it was just a very heavy suit of armor, one that likely was locked up without power. Even if it was still wearable and he had the strength to lift it all the way back to Naper, he most certainly could not climb a ladder with it on. So it had to be left behind, it was simply a waste of space to Adam at the mont. Perhaps in the future he could co back for it, but truthfully, power armor from the sewers wasn't his favorite idea.
His thoughts settled, he finally climbed up the ladder, leaving the power armored corpse alone on the ground beneath him.
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