Chapter 173
"Were things alright on your end, Deccanus?"
"Yes." He said back without hesitation.
"Alright, we will keep the current plan, two teams, we will cover more ground that way anyway." Adam then walked down the stairs with the rest of the group as they made it to the second basement floor. However the new plan they just made was immediately crushed as they found that all the doors were locked on this floor up until they arrived at the large central room.
The floor was broken in the center of the large open room revealing an equally large open room below it, shelves were knocked over, stock was thrown about, super mutants were milling on both levels. But the reason the floor was broken, even despite it being solid concrete, was because, as if prophesied by Deccanus, a huge super mutant, grotesque in the way it had grown, holding a whole tank barrel in its hand and standing tall enough that its head was almost touching the floor of the first floor was right in the center of the hole, practically trapped and unable to go anywhere but this one space it had made for itself.
"Shit!" Salvatore said as he was the first one to see it as they rounded the corner. He pushed the group backwards, back around the corner, but Buddy, who was in front of him, was fearless. Buddy began to open fire with his rapid fire laser emitters at the giant monster as he continued to push forward dauntlessly.
He got only 5 steps forward into the room before the tank barrel swung hard right into the side of his chassis, picking him off his feet and throwing him all the way into the wall on the other side of the room where Adam couldn't see him.
"Buddy!" Adam called out in desperation as he saw this happen. Eve, however, was keeping her cool, her eye laser was already charging, her electrical emitters were crackling with energy at the side of her head as the laser began to glow. Then she stepped out from the wall and blasted the Super Mutant behemoth right in the face. The entire space was lit up by the brilliant red glow which kicked up some dust and dirt that had settled onto the floors and walls creating a small smoke screen.
As the smoke screen cleared the Super Mutant Behemoth roared in pain as one of its eyes was completely shot through however it was very much alive and ready to kill. Luckily the behemoth was too far from Eve who was strategically at the other end of the room so it could not hurt her with its tank cannon, however that did not stop him from trying. It picked up one of the metal shelves and threw it hard at her.
The shelf came careening down the hall at breakneck speeds. Eve nimbly jumped up and grabbed onto the ceiling, using her claws to dig into the concrete ceiling enough to keep her body suspended. Then she laid down flat on the ceiling as the shelf passed harmlessly below her. As she jumped back down, ready to fight, more super mutants began to pour down the hallway charging at the group with weapons at the ready.
The rest of the group was about to help her however the locked doors they passed earlier were broken open by a few super mutants who had flanked them from behind, the very thing Adam was trying to avoid.
A two front fight then broke out as Deccanus and Rae began to engage with the super mutants at their back while Salvatore and Eve fought the ones at the front. Adam helped fight the ones in the back for a bit, shooting one of the mutants dead with his rifle before turning his focus to the front to help Eve and Salvatore, which had the majority of mutants charging in.
Eve was expertly handling the swarm of 5 or 6 mutants by using their huge bodies against them, diving into the thick of them and making it hard not to hit their friends. Meanwhile Salvatore was picking them off one by one, a few rounds to the head each to take them down.
Adam joined the fray, shooting round after round at the mutants in the front as their numbers slowly began to dwindle.
Another shelf was thrown by the behemoth but due to the congestion in the space all it served to do was break the back of one of its mutant friends.
Adam began to hear more laser fire from elsewhere but just assumed it had to be Rae who was repositioning.
As the super mutants at the front dwindled, Adam whipped around to look behind them again just in time to catch the sight of Deccanus impaling a super mutant in the heart with his machete. His head was bleeding for as of yet unknown reasons but he was still fighting as ferociously as ever.
Rae was being grabbed by a super mutant who was trying to rip their arms off, however Adam put a stop to that by shooting the super mutant in its arms, forcing it to let go.
Once the rest of the ones in the back were dealt with, Adam quickly reached into his bag and tossed Deccanus a stimpack. He didn't wait to see what Deccanus' reaction was because he turned back around in time to see a sledgehammer hit the wall hard, just barely missing Salvatore by a few inches. Salvatore managed to duck out of the way and was now firing right into the center mass of the mutant until his rifle clicked, out of ammo.
As he quickly cursed himself, and the mutant brought his hammer above his head to swing down at him, Adam shot a clean round right through the mutant's throat, causing it to lose momentum.
Salvatore didn't waste the opportunity and dropped his rifle, letting it fall on the strap around his body, and then pulled out his shotgun blowing the head off the mutant clean away not a moment later. He then whipped back around the corner and shot another mutant just as it was about to crush Eve with a heavy piece of rubble.
Adam followed it up by hitting another mutant himself, though not killing it.
By now the horde of mutants was thinned to the point where they could advance again and once more could see the behemoth in the broken floor however it looked significantly more fucked up than he had been not a minute ago before the fight with the other super mutants broke out.
The behemoth was covered in burns and blasts and was taking a heavy beating to the point where all it was doing was covering itself. Then Adam saw through the ever dwindling number of super mutants the array of red colored laser fire coming from off to the side, where he couldn't see. He recognized it. It was Buddy! He was still functioning! Somehow. But he didn't have time to celebrate. He needed to save Buddy.
Adam began to throw round after round down range at the behemoth, when his rifle ran out he swapped to the 10mm, when the 10mmm ran out he swapped to the laser pistol, and by the time the energy all worn out the Behemoth was on its last legs.
Eve, having finished cleaning up the last of the mutants at the front, jumped high into the air, landed on the Super mutant Behemoth's chest, and then bore through its neck with her hands spinning at full speed. A moment later the giant creature was dead, Eve standing defiantly on top of its cold corpse and all the other super mutants in the area were handled. The fight was over. The danger had passed.