Episode 7: The Free Radicals

Liebowitz From His Perch at Tyler County Fairgrounds

Route 90 intersects briefly with Route 81 at the Tyler County Fairgrounds (where I got the stealth devices from Liebowitz) then it veers inland toward Aaronholt Homestead further north. The river road (Route 81) continues on along the riverbank until it eventually leads to West Virginia Lumber, my ultimate destination. The most direct route would have been to follow the riverbank, but my Pip-Boy suggested that there were several structures along the inland route that might have useful junk. I was also hoping to find a working weapon workbench, as I had an idea for how to make a suppressor for my Pipe Pistol. If I was going to use stealth technology to sneak into West Virginia Lumber, I would need a muffled gun so I could shoot anyone who got in my way without alerting the rest of the gang. So I took the right fork of the road, away from the river, and explored three different locations before arriving at WV Lumber.

It felt surreal to be thinking about going to a place and killing people on purpose. A month ago I could have never imagined I might be in such a position. But this leader of the Free Radicals was clearly a man of no conscience, and having him in control of a group of former criminals, terrorizing people around Flatwoods, seemed like the antithesis of what the Responders were supposed to be all about. If I wanted to help revive the Responders, and make a real difference in Appalachia, I decided I would sometimes have to do things that didn't sit well to make it happen. Otherwise, whatever happened to the Responders that caused them to disappear might happen to me and the other residents of Flatwoods too.

Sign North of Tyler County Fairgrounds Next to Roadside Picnic Area

The road north of Tyler County Fairgrounds turns hilly almost immediately, as it rises up to a higher plateau. I passed a sign for the fairgrounds as night was falling. Nearby was a roadside area with picnic tables and a parking lot. I noticed a white-colored robot lying unmoving in that parking lot, and as I moved closer to have a look, I could smell the characteristic odor of something long dead. Turned out to be a dead soldier named Private Miller, whose body lay near one of the picnic tables. 

The robot was carrying a handwritten message from Private Miller that had been sent to someone named Tom. It looks like Miller was trying to pass off painted lead bars as gold to this Tom fellow. The note from Miller told Tom to bring a "deposit" and not to send his robot, but to come himself. It looks like Tom was smart enough not to comply, though.  I assume that Miller and the robot ended up killing each other. Maybe the robot could somehow tell the gold bars were fake. I found the fake gold in a shopping cart between the two of them. Wasn't sure what those bars were made of at the time, but when I melted them down it seemed pretty clear they were lead. They had a quite low melting point and were gray in color. More raw materials for making bullets!

Orange Floater at Darling Sisters Lab

Later, when I reached the top of the hill, my Pip-Boy told me there was a set of cabins or shacks nearby, so I headed in that direction hoping either to meet some other Vault Dwellers, or to find some junk that I could use for crafting. The place turned out to be deserted - at least of people. Instead, there were these very strange balloon-like creatures in bright colors that had settled into the courtyard area in front of the buildings. They are too strange-looking to have come from a radiation-induced mutation. I have to think that they were engineered by some idiot with too much time on their hands. Maybe by the same people who gave the Super Mutants and their hounds green skin. I have to wonder if it was a military thing, as these floaters would probably make good guards.

The creatures apparently hide underground, kind of like a landmine, until something disturbs them, then they pop up very fast and try to attack by spitting deadly substances. The blue ones spit some kind of hyper-cold liquid, the orange ones spit a fiery slurry, and the green ones spit some kind of poison. They have eyes and what looks like a mouth, so they must be self-supporting. Maybe they feed on the dead after they've killed them. When you shoot them, they explode, raining their cold, fiery, or poisonous liquids all over you if you get too close. A final "screw you" to their killers.

The collection of cabins seems to have originally been a camp of some sort. There was a chemistry bench crammed inside a metal trailer, and a Tinker's bench in one of the wooden shacks. Beds were mostly mattresses on the floor, though - nothing fancy. I found seven bars of soap in a wheelbarrow, which made me wonder if they were using the chemistry bench to make soap, but when I looked at the bench it had no plans for soap. Behind one of the buildings was a machine, still running, that seemed to be recording data onto a holotape. Not sure what kind of data, but maybe they were environmentalists collecting air quality data or something. But if that's true, where were the machines for doing the analysis?

Grove's Family Cabins

Not too far up the road and also on the left side was a pair of cabins that might have been more like lodges. They had bunk beds in them as though they were designed for several adults to stay at the same time, and one of them had a First Aid box on the wall as though injury were an important consideration of those who stayed there. The place was overrun with Scorched when I arrived. Once they were dispatched, I looked around but didn't find much. The garden out back did have pumpkins, carrots, and mutfruit, though, so this would be a good place to get starter plants from, since my current CAMP garden doesn't have carrots. Not sure if I can grow pumpkins or not.

I was getting closer to West Virginia Lumber Company at this point, but still had not found a weapon workbench. I found myself thinking about turning around and going back to my CAMP so I could make that suppressor for my Pipe Pistol, but the real reason was that I didn't feel ready for the showdown with the Free Radical leader. I knew there was a decent chance I could die - or possibly worse, be captured and tortured. I started asking myself if I thought I could put my pistol under my chin and pull the trigger to avoid capture. My mind said yes, but my heart was less certain. That realization didn't do anything to soothe my anxiety.

Aaronholt Homestead

A little further up the road was a really nice place called Aaronholt Homestead. It seems like an excellent place to settle, and I was really surprised not to find anyone living there. There were three main houses, a good size barn, another shed by a corral, and a really large field down below the houses with some crops still managing to survive - corn, tatoes, pumpkins and cranberries. Probably the nicest house I had seen, comparable to that at Anchor Farm. I even found two mutfruit plants, and a dilapidated building out in the field with lots of beehives full of honey. Between this place and the cabins I had just left, there was everything a person would need to make adhesive. With all of the advantages, and the excellent housing, you would think that some of the Settlers or Raiders would have moved in. But I think it must be the Free Radicals over at West Virginia Lumber that are the main deterrent. 

I say this because I saw some Raiders just hanging around the road to the north of the Farm when I was looking around. They had settled in to a spot up on a rocky ledge overlooking the fields. When I walked up there to investigate, it looked like they had set up some kind of checkpoint on the road. I had seen a checkpoint before near Flatwoods, so I thought at first maybe it was the same group (the Steel Brotherhood or whatever they call themselves) but these guys, in typical Raider fashion, just started shooting as I got close. They had a machine gun turret set up too. Those things are scary! Fortunately, it took awhile to detect me, and wasn't all that accurate when it did. Maybe with a little better engineering though...

I have to assume that these guys worked with the Raiders over at WV Lumber. Fortunately, they were terrible shots and I was able to kill both of them and destroy their turret with only minimal injuries. But I can see how their presence would keep people from settling at Aaronholt Homestead. That, and the feral dogs up at the house and the vicious insects that infest the fields. What a waste of an excellent set of resources. I might even consider moving up here myself if it wasn't for the Raider threat.

One of the best things about Aaronholt Homestead on this visit, though, was the weapon workbench I found in a locked shed out in the field. The shed had a bunch of useful supplies and a frame for building some kind of military-style armor too. I was able to close the door to keep the murderous insects out, and managed to figure out how to build a suppressor for my Pipe Pistol, which I then went out and tested on the things called Bloatflies and Bloodbugs. With that pistol in hand, I felt a little better about trying to sneak into West Virginia Lumber. I waited at Aaronholt through the heat of the day, and then headed out to have a look at the base for the Free Radical Raider gang.

West Virginia Lumber Company - Home of the Free Radical Gang

The Free Radicals had fortified their camp pretty well, using shipping containers and tall wooden walls to make sneaking inside a challenge. Using the binoculars I got at the Landview Lighthouse, I made a slow circuit of West Virginia Lumber, spying on it from a distance, and discovered that they did have guards up in several towers throughout the encampment watching for enemies, but they didn't seem to be all that diligent about watching in all directions.  

I went to the north side, following the edge of the river, and as I neared the encampment I saw that they had made good use of the local topography. A large rocky outcrop came right up to the river at one point, and the raiders had built a wooden wall with a door in it, and a guard tower right beside the door to keep interlopers out. It would be too risky to try to sneak up to that door and pick the lock in the shadow of that tower, even in the dark, because the tower guard would likely hear me. The rocky outcrop was tall, but not too tall to climb over. The problem was that doing so would expose me to view if the guard in the tower were looking my way. Darkness helped, but I wasn't sure I could climb over the outcrop without being seen. The third option was to get down in the river itself and swim past the boulders, but then I would be wet, would likely make noise as I walked, and would leave a wet trail once I got inside. So I decided to risk going over the boulders.

North Side of WV Lumber - Guard Tower (Upper Left), Wooden Wall, and Rocky Outcrop

That plan worked like a charm, but then I came to a more open area with a low rock wall, but two more guard towers with a view of the open area. There were some low shrubs that hadn't been cut back, which helped, but it was still trickier because I needed to make sure that both guards would be looking the other way. I felt like I would be terribly exposed if I tried to enter that way, although I could see that there appeared to be a way to get into the largest building in the camp by heading that direction. But I decided to move south just a bit more along the river to see if there was a less-exposed way to get to the same building.

The answer was no. When I moved about 50 yards north, and closer to the largest building, I reached another rocky outcrop, and beyond it was a boat dock with a boat tied up there and a man unloading supplies of some sort.  There was also a guard up in the tower on top of the tallest building, and another watcher on a broken bridge further south. Too many chances to be seen that way.  I decided my best option was to try to sneak across the open space when the two guards were looking the other way.  I pulled out the stealth device that Liebowitz had given me to see if it would help. It was a risk, but I thought that if something went wrong, I could run for the river and jump in, then swim to safety. They might not find me in the water in the dark.

Riverside Access to Encampment - Guard Tower (left) and Tall Building w/Tower (right)

It's hard to tell if stealth technology is working well when you're the one using it, so I also used the vegetation and the deeper shadows to move in closer to the low rock wall. Someone was playing music down in the encampment, and I think it may have drawn the attention of the guards, because I was able to make it all the way to the wall without either of the guards looking my way. So much for the need for stealth technology! Once I got in close, it was easier to keep something between me and at least one of the guard towers at all times. I could watch just one person, and move when they were looking away.

I was breathing heavy and sweating at this point, mostly from nerves rather than exertion, but the walkways around the tall building were strangely quiet. I think they relied too much on their guard towers and their numbers to keep them safe. And maybe they weren't expecting an infiltration by a lone gunman. The stealth tech only worked for two or three minutes, so that told me I needed to be careful how I used the remaining two. One for killing the leader, and one more for getting out.

It took a couple of minutes to find a door leading inside the tall building. Once inside, I could hear sounds from the floor above me, but nothing on the main floor. Stairs led down to a lower floor, which also proved to be empty. The whole time I was in the building, I had the stealth tech on my hip and a thumb poised to push the button. But I didn't end up needing it until I got close to the leader. 

On the lower floor, I found a path leading down into what looked like a cave. I walked down that pathway a short distance until I heard voices. It was a conversation between the leader of the Free Radicals and someone else, and they were talking about the men they had sent to get the treasure, and how they hadn't been up to the job. They were talking about assigning someone else to the task. This told me that it wasn't the whole gang that was tasked with harassing the Wayward, but just a couple of people. If the leader were dead, the harassment might end.

Free Radical Leaders Cave Beneath the Tallest Building in the Encampment

I reached for the device Liebowitz had given me, pushed the button, and hoped for the best. I then snuck closer and the two men never even noticed me. Either that tech works extremely well, or they thought they were safe, and were too engrossed in their conversation to notice another presence. I found a spot where I was partially hidden but where I could see the leader and then stand up to see the other guy.  I pulled out my suppressed Pipe Pistol, lined up a high percentage shot, and pulled the trigger three times to make sure. The leader died almost instantly. The other man yelled and pulled his gun, but the sound must not have carried the 100 feet or so back up the tunnel to alert the people back in the main building. I turned my gun on him as he was pulling his gun, and managed to kill him before he could pull the trigger and make any noise.

I expected to have some kind of emotional reaction to killing these two, but I think a combination of the fear of getting caught, and the fact that I thought the leader deserved to die won out. The shakes actually came later, once I had escaped the encampment and was out in the forest alone. 

When I headed back up the tunnel to the main building, I could still hear someone moving around upstairs, and I decided that if they were part of the leadership, they would have to go as well. It was the only way to be fairly sure that the Wayward was safe. I thought about leaving a note telling the rest of them to leave the Wayward alone, but decided that might only bring down more trouble on Duchess and Mort. So I snuck upstairs, killed two more Raiders with my suppressed pistol, and headed back to the front door of the building.

I used the third stealth tech to get out of the encampment without being seen. At some point, the Free Radicals would find their leaders dead, but they would have no idea who had done it or why. I hoped that they might start accusing each other and that might even start a civil war, but as long as they left the Wayward and Flatwoods alone for now, I was okay. I figured sometime in the future, we could come back and deal with the rest of the raiders, maybe when I had some friends who could join me.

A Smiling Duchess at the Wayward

As you might expect, Duchess was very pleased at the news that I had taken care of the problem. She didn't want to know any specifics, which is a relief because I didn't really want to say what I had done. She offered me a lifetime discount on any purchases I might make from her in the future, and she paid me some caps and gave me some other goods as thanks. For me, the more important thing was that I now had a friend in Duchess, and probably Mort as well, and with the biggest Raider gang in the area hobbled for awhile, maybe we could do something to start making life better for the people living around Flatwoods, and for those attracted to the town by the Responder's radio message.

I hadn't even finished my first celebratory beer before Duchess asked me if I would consider helping her with another matter. But that's enough for this entry. I'll write more about that another time.