Episode 8: The Responders at Morgantown Airport

 

View of Morgantown Airport from the South

After taking care of the leader of the free radicals, Duchess asked me if I would help her with another problem. I was immediately on my guard. I like Duchess well enough, but it seems like she is pretty comfortable drawing me into very dangerous circumstances, and I'm not sure that the rewards she offers are worth the risk. On the other hand, the Wayward has become a sort of home base for me, a place where I check in almost every time I come back from a day or two on the road, and it's certainly the center of human activity around Flatwoods. I guess you could say I'm developing a certain fondness for the Wayward and its denizens and want to see it survive. 

So against my better judgement, I let her tell me what she wanted, knowing that it would be hard to turn her down. It seems that she has lost her "muscle" as she referred to them - a couple of robots that she uses as guards around the place. One of them has a transmitter that should be sending out a radio signal I can trace on my Pip-Boy, once I get close. The job doesn't sound so bad. They've been gone long enough that they're probably damaged or destroyed. I just need to report back on what I find. So I said I would be willing to help, but that I had something else I needed to do first. That "something else" is to go to Morgantown Airport and see if any of the Responders have come back and set up a base of operations there. 

When I finished my Responder training and logged onto the terminal in the Flatwoods church for the first time, I saw an urgent message from Maria Chavez warning that Scorched were moving into the main base at Morgantown Airport. Heather is pretty sure the Responders were all wiped out in that attack. She may be right. I know it's a longshot, but I just keep hoping I'm not out here trying to do this alone! It would be great if there were a few survivors and they were at the Airport trying to get things set up again. Or maybe I'll find the Overseer there. She seemed interested in the Responders too, so anything is possible.

View of Gorge Junkyard from the North

My Pip-Boy suggested I could get to Morgantown Airport one of two ways. I could travel north along the Blue 59 route, past Gorge Junkyard, and then make a turn onto Route 95A. That way would lead to the airport without the need to pass through any large towns. The other involved a right turn onto Route 64 just south of Gorge Junkyard, but I would then need to make my way all the way through Morgantown, which appears to be much larger than Flatwoods, and it could be infested with Raiders or Scorched, or possibly Ghouls. It seemed to me that Route 95A would be safer.

I stopped in at Gorge Junkyard on the way by. It was a good place to rest, and I always have my eye out for useful junk. There seemed to be plenty of junk to choose from. There's also a house on the property that's in pretty good shape, a couple of sheds with decent roofs, and some buses and boats that could be used for shelter in a pinch. The site was overrun by aggressive robots when I arrived, and I had to fight off four Giant Ticks among the junkpiles. But the big metal containers made for great cover from the robots' laser fire, and I was able to dispatch the hostiles without too much trouble.

Once the junkyard was safe, I sat on the porch of the house to eat my lunch and drink a couple of Nuka Colas I found in a machine behind one of the sheds. I started fiddling with the radio on my Pip-Boy to see if I could get it tuned to the right frequency to pick up the signal of Duchess' robots, when I happened on Appalachia Radio. I've heard it before in a couple of places where the radios had been left on by a previous occupant, but I guess I never realized that the broadcast was live - or at least recently recorded. I assumed it was an old recording, maybe because of the style of music, but as I listened I realized that the woman talking between songs actually came back to Appalachia recently. She seems to have a nice personality, as far as I can tell. Her name is Julie. I'm not a big fan of the music selection -  we had better stuff in the Vault - but its good enough to chase the blues away on long, lonely nights.

View of Morgantown Airport from Near the Garden Area

The trip from Gorge Junkyard out to the airport was mostly uneventful. I ran into a few Scorched at Wilson Brothers Auto Repair, and happened upon a Responder Robot along the railroad tracks near some rusting railcars. The robot was leading a two-headed Brahmin and selling various goods for caps. I'm shocked that some Raider hasn't killed the robot for its caps or its goods, but maybe those Responder bots are tougher than they look.

I entered the Morgantown Airport from the northwest through a hole in the fence. There was a small garden there with some crops that were still surviving. Pumpkins, Corn, and some Tatos.  I picked a few so I could maybe plant them at Gorge Junkyard as a backup for my own CAMP garden. If I build a Water Purifier, I can use the Corn and Tatos, along with some Mutfruit, to make Adhesive.

There were signs of the Responders everywhere at the airport. They had set up an extensive base of operations with a building dedicated to medical treatment, another for working on bots, and lots of shipping containers turned into houses and workshops. The place was overrun with Scorched. With the wide open firing lanes, I sometimes had as many as three Scorched trying to shoot me at the same time! Fortunately, they weren't very good shots at a distance. They hit me a couple of times, but my improving armor and a strategically used Stimpak kept me in fighting shape. It's hard to believe how many times I've already been shot with either bullets or lasers. If it weren't for my armor, I'd probably be dead several times over already.

Morgantown Airport Communication Tower

When you get close to the Morgantown Airport, there's a broadcast that can be picked up on one of the radio frequencies. It's Maria Chavez, the leader of the Responders, calling on all hands to come to the Morgantown Airport and help defend it against a Scorched attack. There is a communications tower at the airport that is the source of the message. She sounds nervous in the recording, and from what I found inside the airport terminal, she had reason to be.

The Responders had blocked all points of entry into the terminal building except for a door on the south side. There were a number of Scorched inside the terminal, sometimes in small clusters of three or four. Fortunately, there were many objects to provide cover, and I was able to clear out the ground floor without much difficulty. It was dangerous, but not really deadly. The suppressor on my Pipe Rifle helped keep me from being swarmed.

I had to hack a terminal to get up to the next floor, though there must have been another way in that I just missed. Otherwise, I wouldn't have run into Scorched on the second floor. The horror of the final battle here was more evident upstairs, and the end was clearly awful for some people. The most memorable was a woman I found who had hidden in a storage room to escape the Scorched. She was apparently locked in, and left a holotape for whoever might find her. She had some food and water, but it would only last so long, and it quickly became clear to her that there was nobody left to come to her rescue. She must have died of thirst in there. A terrible and lonely way to go.

Morgantown Airport West Entrance

On the top floor, I met a man living inside the terminal by the name of Dontrelle. It's a wonder he can survive in there. Dontrelle's brother had been a Responder and when Dontrelle realized he was dying of cancer from all of his exposure to rads, he decided to come back to the place where his brother likely died and build a small memorial to the Responders. I asked if there was anything I could do to help him, but he said no. He gave me some Radaway, which he said he no longer needed, and told me that there was a holotape with Maria Chavez's last words on the map table next to his memorial.

Maria Chavez knew she was about to die. But she had a message for anyone who might find her holotape. She said there was a terminal nearby with information about an innoculation project against the Scorched plague. She suggested that whoever found the tape should read about it. That it might save their life. I went looking for the terminal but thought I was out of luck. I tried all the live terminals I could find in the terminal building, but none seemed to have anything about the project. It was only after I went outside to salvage scrap from the airplane hangers that I found a terminal describing the project. It was in the hanger that had been converted to a medical center.

Airplane Hangers (center left) at Morgantown Airport

It seems that someone by the name of Dr. Hudson was working on an innoculation against the Scorched plague. She had apparently made some good progress, but it's unclear whether she finished the work or not before Morgantown Airport was attacked. I don't even know whether she was at the airport, or at the AVR Medical Center where the work was being conducted. 

But as I was leaving the airport, I saw my first Scorchbeast flying nearby, trailing some kind of poison behind it. It made me imagine a fire-breathing dragon trailing smoke. I immediately put on a gas mask I was carrying, but seeing the Scorchbeast in real life convinced me how dangerous this Scorched plague might still be, and the need to figure out whether a vaccine against it might be possible. Without a vaccine, history might just repeat itself, with all of these new arrivals succumbing to the plague, turning into Scorched, and eventually killing or driving off everyone else who was not infected.

I think that's enough for this entry. The Responders are gone, and there aren't any survivors trying to set up a new base at the airport. I did find evidence of the Overseer. She left a cache and a holotape at the airport. She had learned about the inoculation project too and encouraged anyone who found her holotape to do the same. After I help Duchess find her robots, I'll need to decide whether to head to Sutton to follow the Overseer's personal journey, or to the AVR Medical Center to see if there is any information about the vaccine Dr. Hudson was developing. The Overseer may have been to AVR already, and if so, Sutton might be the better destination to try first.