The Holotape Archive

Found recordings. Real ones. Listen at your own risk... Dusty out.

EP01: Introductions

DJ Dusty opens the signal for the first time. Introductions are made. The Holotapes are coming...

Dusty:

Well now… ain’t this somethin’? You and me… meetin’ up like this?!?

If you’re hearing my voice, it means two things. One, that old world tech still’s got some kick left in her… and two, maybe you’re ready for something special. Well, sugar… I reckon you found just that!

Now, my pappy used to say, “Don’t count your radroach eggs before they hatch.” But that old geezer couldn’t count no how. So… here we are.

My name’s DJ Dusty. And this, well, this is the Dusty Signal.

Your ol’ gal Dusty’s been all over the commonwealths… heck, I’ve even traveled across the pond to see what’s shakin’ in the tunnels of London. And the only constant good thing I’ve ever had was a radio.

I’ve lived a… well, let’s call it a colorful, rite plum-filled life. Never knew my parents, and the folks who raised me? Well, they weren’t the ones who should have. I learned early on that sleep’s optional. And trust? Well, that can cost ya. Learnt how to hurt before I learned how to heal… and sugar, I got real good at it. But being good at something don’t mean it’s who you are. So I walked away… well, escaped away is more accurate. Hardest thing I’d ever done, but the best thing I coulda done. Ain’t no one beyond changin’. Not so long as they’re still breathin’.

After that, I ran caravan routes where a smile could get you paid… or killed, maybe even both. Did some mercenary work here and there. Hell, I even spent some time scribbling notes for the old Brotherhood. Cataloguin’ machines and tech older than the bombs themselves. And I ain’t about to lie to you… I’ve done some ugly things to stay breathin’. But I reckon most of us have.

Now somewhere between dodgin’ deathclaws and double-crossers, I heard a voice on the radio. Now, I ain’t never met him, not for a lack of trying, though.

But I listened to him… I mean, really listened to him. He didn’t sugarcoat nothin’, didn’t pretend the world weren’t ugly. But damn, if he didn’t believe — I mean really believe — that people were still worth talking to. That hope could be broadcast. That humanity could ride these airwaves. And honey, that was enough for me.

So I sold my caravan, hung up my rifle, and dusted off an old transmitter. I set out to learn radio best my little noggin could manage. Then… I just started talkin’.

That’s what the Dusty Signal is, sugar. It ain’t no sermon, ain’t a history lesson, and it sure as hell ain’t no promise. It’s just a voice in the dark. A place for you to breathe. A campfire on the airwaves… for you, my wasteland wanderers, my settlement seekers, my little devils. And if you’re hearin’ me right now, know this to be fact.

You’re family. Don’t matter where you’re from. How long you stay. What ya believe, or how you found me. And I don’t care a lick what you’ve had to do to survive neither.

Fact is, “family” is gettin’ rare in this world. People are fighting just to fight it seems. So, welcome to Dusty’s family. Here, we’ll gather ’round the radio to spin a yarn or two.

Now, I’ve collected many a story over the years. Some are fun. Some… well, not so much. A few that folks never meant for anyone else to hear. Tales of survival, grief, dumb luck, bad decisions… and those stubborn little sparks that keep lighting the way through a dark world.

Our season’s story is about a man named Nate Campbell. And man, oh man, it’s a dandy of a tale! Nate was a family man and a pre-war soldier. Yep! You heard that right! A bona fide nuclear fallout virgin! You see, Vault-Tec froze him and his family solid for two hundred and ten years. And when he woke up, his wife was murdered and his baby boy stolen.

Now, I don’t know about y’all, but that’s a wake-up call that would break most people right then and there. But not our boy… not ol’ Nate! You see, I found his recordings on his busted old Pip-Boy. Daily adventures as he fought to avenge his wife’s murder and get his son back… all recorded in his voice. Raw and personal. Just a man trying to stay sane while the world takes everything from him.

Now, he didn’t record ’em for fame, didn’t record ’em for fortune neither. Heck, I’ll bet he never even thought anyone would hear ’em. But I did, and now… so will you.

Will he find his son? Does he avenge his wife?

Sugar, you’re just gonna have to tune in and find out for yourself.

So, if you’re wanderin’… if you’re tired… if you just need a place to forget your troubles for a spell… tune in, my little devils. I’ll keep the stories coming. You just keep living.

This is the Dusty Signal, broadcastin’ from everywhere… and nowhere.

Stay alive. Stay strange. Dusty out.

EP02: Thawed

Nates first holotape recording... fair warning, Sugar. It's rough...

DUSTY INTRO:  

Well now… Here we are.

You found your way to the signal — welcome.  I mean that, sugar. Pull up whatever you’re sitting on and get comfortable. You’re amongst friends here.

Name’s DJ Dusty, and this? Well… honey, this is the Dusty Signal. So, gather ’round the radio campfire and get yer ears ready. We’re ’bout to start one dandy of a tale!

If you caught the teaser, my ad for this little show, then you already know more about me than I intended to share… but sugar, that’s what happens when you sit down with friends and just start yappin’. And I wouldn’t have it any other way neither.

Look… all you need to know ’bout me is… well. Just think of me as your guide through story town.

Now. That’s enough about me. Let’s get to the real star of this show… good ol’ Nate Campbell… the sole survivor from Vault 111. This man’s been through things nobody should have to endure. Nobody. And I mean that.

I found his recordings on a busted old Pip-Boy — daily logs, made in his own voice, as he tries to make sense of a world he’d never been in. He lived before the bombs fell and Vault-Tec froze him and his family solid for two hundred and ten years. And… when he woke up, his wife was murdered and his baby boy was stolen.

Now… I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years as I traveled the wasteland. And I’ve seen a lot of people broken down to their last shred of hope.

This one though… this one got to me.

So I’m broadcasting it. Because stories like this one deserve to be heard, just as they are. Besides, I reckon somewhere out there, somebody needs to hear it… maybe that someone is you.

Now, what you’re ’bout to listen to is the very first tape. His very first entry.

Fair warning, my little devils — it’s rough.

But listen close, because this… this is where it all starts.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

This is… my name is… Nate…

I just… this thing, it has a recorder. This Pip-Boy… Might as well use it… try and keep… something… something to hold onto.

Hold on to… what, though?

I… woke up… well… I was… thawed out. We. We… were thawed out. We ran.

Ran to the vault… Vault 111… Bombs dropped… We… we… were supposed to be safe! They lied… Of course they lied!

Nora’s… dead.

I… watched it happen. Through… the glass. I… I couldn’t do a damn thing. They… shot her…

No.

HE shot her!!

They just… took Shaun. My son. My… baby boy. And I just…

I can’t… I just can’t do this right now.

Get your shit together, Nate. You’re a soldier… act like one.

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

Yeah…

I know.

First time I heard that tape — I sat real still for a good while after. Didn’t have much to say neither. And that don’t happen often, I can tell you that much.

“Get your shit together, Nate.”

Sugar, I’ve said some version of those words to myself more times than I can rightly count. Different words maybe. Same meaning.

Do y’all know that moment? When the darkness gets so big it tries to swallow you whole — and the only thing left standin’ is whatever part of you’s just too stubborn to quit. The part that gets back up. Not because it wants to. Just because lyin’ down ain’t an option no more.

Now… some of you know exactly what I’m talkin’ about. Exactly how that feels. Maybe you’re staring down darkness right now. Thinking there’s no way out… that life’s beaten you.

It hasn’t.

Hear my words and know this to be fact, sugar. This is a safe place. It’s a place for hope… for warmth… for light. Whatever weight you’re carrying — you don’t have to carry it alone.

That’s what the signal’s for, honey… a place to forget your troubles for a spell… to catch your breath… a place where, for just a moment, we all want the same thing… for Nate to find his boy.

Now. He’s got a long road ahead of him. A real long one. And we’re gonna walk every step of it together — you, me, and one very stubborn man with a Pip-Boy and a mission.

There are more tapes. Many more.

So… stay close to the signal.

And should you just need to talk, complain, or praise — just drop me a letter through the courier network and I’ll write you back as soon as I can.

Stay alive.

Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP03: Control

Nate is clinging onto hope and a "Red Menace" in order to make it out of Vault 111.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Well, hello again, my little devils.

You came back.

I’m glad.

If you’re just now finding the signal — welcome to the family, sugar. Pull up a chair. The fire’s just gettin’ started. Now, ya may want to start with Holotape One first… but maybe you’re the type who jumps in feet first and figures it out as you go along.

Honestly? I can respect that.

Last time we left our boy Nate — he was barely holdin’ together. Raw. Broken. Talking to a Pip-Boy recorder in an empty vault, just trying to find something to hold onto.

I won’t sugarcoat it, sugar. That first tape… was hard to hear.

But this one?

This one’s different.

You see, somewhere between that first entry and this one — something shifted in him. The grief… it’s still there. It ain’t going nowhere. But something else showed up too… something that don’t ask permission. And it certainly won’t apologize for taking charge.

The soldier woke up.

So settle in, my little devils. Tape two is now rolling.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

October 23rd, 2287.

This is the second entry of the day. My first was… a bit too raw.

Twenty-two eighty-seven?

At least… that’s what the Pip-Boy says anyway.

I thought it had to be a system glitch. Cryo probably fried the clock during reboot or something.

But… then I saw it again, on the cryo terminal. Same date. Same time. And I just… didn’t want to look at it again.

Because if it’s real… if two hundred and ten years have really gone by for everyone I know, everyone I ever loved… I mean, for me, it feels like just a few minutes have passed since we raced into the vault. Since the bombs fell.

I just can’t think about it right now.

So I did what I always do when reality breaks. I focused. I adapted. And I found a reason to keep going.

Shaun… is alive. He has to be.

They didn’t kill me because I was their backup plan. That bastard said so himself. I have no way to know how much time had gone by, but they never came back for me. So I must still be a viable backup plan.

Well, that was a grave mistake on their part.

They thought they were leaving behind a grieving father. But what they woke up in me instead… is the killer that I know I can be. The killer that’s now hunting them.

I’m going to find Shaun. And I’m going to bury the ones who took him.

Vault 111 isn’t a shelter. I know that now. It’s a goddamn lab… and we were specimens. Frozen. Tracked. Measured. Without any consent or knowledge.

One security log made it crystal clear: vitals were monitored, but medical intervention wasn’t allowed unless 80% of us were dead.

80%.

And even then? We weren’t getting out. The plan was for the staff to leave. The rest of us were meant to stay frozen… forever.

The staff were waiting on an all-clear order that never came. The Overseer stuck to policy, and soon food ran out and people got desperate. According to files left on the security terminals, on April 23rd, 2078, the staff revolted. He died in his office… the piece of shit coward that he was. Serves him right.

When I made it in there, it was a mess. Terminal still had power though. His logs were paranoid. Obsessive. He wrote about a prototype weapon he’d created, called a Cryolator. Some kind of portable freeze ray, I think. It’s locked up in his office and I don’t have the proper tools to open it… yet.

I’ll be back for it though.

That reminds me — I need to keep track of anything I find now.

Inventory rundown: two 10mm pistols, one in pretty good shape, the other not so much. Roughly 90 rounds though. Four stimpaks. Some Rad-X. A couple bottles of purified water and, by some miracle, a few sealed Cram packs. Preservatives for the win.

I also found two security batons — one outside the cafeteria, the other by the generator hall. I used one to bash some gigantic cockroaches. I’d always heard it said that cockroaches and Fancy Lad Snack Cakes would survive a nuclear blast. Well… I can check giant roaches off the bingo card. No snack cakes yet though.

Found something else too… a holotape still loaded in the kitchen rec terminal. Red Menace.

Ramirez. Ramirez and I used to play it between ops. When we had mission downtime. Man… I miss that guy.

Finding that tape put a smile on my face. And I didn’t think that would be possible. I didn’t think I’d feel anything but rage.

I took that tape. Call it sentiment, call it weakness… but right now, it’s something to hold onto. Hope. It’s all I’ve got now.

I made my way back to the cryo chamber. Straight to… her pod. Nora’s body is right there… still holding the spot where Shaun used to be.

She tried to stop them. She tried to protect our son.

He shot her. One round. Clean. Center mass. Big bore revolver — .44, maybe. No hesitation. The guy was trained. Scar across his face. No fear. No emotion. I’ve seen soldiers like that in the field. Cold, calculated, and without remorse. People that stopped worrying about right and wrong… about humanity… long ago.

He’s the kind of guy the world can do without. Lucky for the world… I’m just the guy to remove him from it.

I found this Pip-Boy on a corpse by the exit. Synced it up. I’ve done all I can do down here.

I don’t know what they wanted with Shaun… or why they left me alive.

But I know this. Shaun is my son. I will tear through whatever is left of the world up there to find him… and bring him home.

I’m going topside.

I’m going home.

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

Well now…

That’s more like it.

I told y’all something shifted — and I meant it. That man went from barely stringing words together to rattling off inventory like he’s briefing a strike team… all while processing the end of his world and the murder of his wife.

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve met a lot of people out here in the wasteland. Hard people. Broken people. People who rebuilt themselves out of whatever scraps were left after life got through with ’em.

But Nate Campbell? Sugar, he might just be the most dangerous kind of ’em all. The kind that has absolutely nothing left to lose — and the ultimate reason to live.

Now. That fella he described. The one with the scar. Cold eyes. Big bore revolver. No hesitation.

Yeah. I know that type… all too well. The world has too many of those folks as it is. Something tells me that particular fella has a meeting in his future. A reckoning. And I can’t imagine Nate’s gonna be too forgiving neither.

Your gal Dusty has a favor to ask of ya. If you’ve got something to say — a question, a thought, maybe just need to get something off your chest — the courier network is open.

Now, I won’t pretend the mail system out here is what it used to be. I work with what I’ve got — Gee Mail, the Yah-Hoo Rider, that Hot Mail Girl, the old coot Pro-Ton Postman, and the perpetually tardy Out-Look Express. Between the five of ’em, something usually gets through eventually. Usually.

Whichever courier service you choose to use, drop me a letter. Let me know what you think about this little show… about our boy Nate… about me… or just some thoughts ya got rattlin’ around your noggin. I read every one. Honestly, I do. And the good ones? Well. They just might make it on air.

Nate’s heading topside now. Heading home. But his story is far from over. He’ll have to hold onto that anger he’s carrying. He’s going to need every bit of it.

But sugar, that doesn’t mean you have to hang onto yours.

Until our paths cross once again…

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP04: Topside

The world beyond the Vault isn't what Nate expected... but, it's the world he got. Now he has to survive in it.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back, my little devils.

Pull up a chair and grab whatever drink gets ya through… because sugar, I’ve got a treat for you today!

Before we dive into today’s tape… take a second to think back to the first time you ever saw the wasteland. Having some trouble? That’s because you can’t, right? You see, you and me… we grew up in it. Got used to it. Built a life around it. The wasteland and all its glorious danger and wonder is just normal to us.

But our boy Nate… he has never seen it before. Just think on that for a sec.

This man was frozen solid before the first radroach ever figured out it could grow to the size of a labrador. A time when the grass was green, the birds would sing you a song… and nobody had a care in the world. His normal was just sunshine and rainbows. Then he walked out to… all of this.

Yep, ol’ Nate got his nuclear fallout cherry popped!

Tape three is now rolling.

NATE’S RECORDING:

Log zero-zero-three. October 23rd, 2287. Late afternoon. Third entry today.

When the platform reached the surface, the sunlight hit me hard. I actually recoiled. Two hundred and ten years of fluorescent vault lighting and I wasn’t ready for mid-morning sun. That could have been a costly mistake. I need to be better than that if I want to survive.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to see topside. But not this.

The sky was bright. But wrong. The color was wrong. The quiet was wrong. This was our neighborhood. Our street. Sanctuary Hills.

Where’s the color? Where’s the life?

It feels like minutes ago we were racing up that hill toward the vault. There was a blue sky that morning. A light breeze. Orange leaves on the trees. Actually, a beautiful autumn day — if you don’t count the atomic bombs raining death from above, that is.

Now. Bones. Rust. Ash. Silence. Houses that are shells. Debris everywhere. Roads split open. Everything is dead or dying. The damage is everywhere. All of it. Every direction I look.

Where are the soldiers? The patrols? Where is anyone?

If it’s really been two hundred and ten years — where’s the government? Where’s the rebuilding? We had plans. Emergency bunkers. Encrypted communications. Tech guided recovery teams. Protocols that were debated and rehearsed and briefed at the highest of levels. Hell, I was in those briefings. I know what post-war America was supposed to look like.

It wasn’t supposed to look like this.

No recovery. No structure. No system. No signs of civilized life anywhere I can see. Did society just fail? Did we give up?

I had to breathe. Had to force myself to stop and breathe.

Every part of me wanted to run down that hill. Find our house. Find Shaun’s room. Find his crib. Convince myself this was something I could wake up from. But I didn’t run. The father in me wanted to sprint with wild abandon. The soldier in me though… he held the line. He always does.

I locked it down. Let the soldier take over. The father has to wait.

That’s when I noticed the Pip-Boy’s Geiger counter ticking. Radiation. Low levels — manageable — but present. I’ll need Rad-X as soon as I can find or make some.

I also noticed radio stations coming through. And a search and rescue beacon. Radio stations mean civilized society. Rescue beacons mean survivors that need help. How can both exist at the same time? Doesn’t matter. I need answers. The area hasn’t been rebuilt — but people are out there somewhere. And if people are out there, information is out there. Clues to where they took Shaun are out there. And I’ll find them.

I swept the area around the vault entrance. Scanning for movement. Tracks. Footprints. Dust trails. Anything. They had to have left something.

But I found no boot prints. No drag marks. No tire tracks. No vertibird rotor wash patterns. Nothing. Just silence and ash.

I couldn’t give up though. I wouldn’t.

Found a security trailer near the entrance — intact, half-covered in brush. Inside was a mess, but I found two sealed cans of something that might have been food once and a sealed medikit. The bones of a security guard lay on the floor.

Am I the first person in here since the bombs fell? I would’ve thought someone would have laid this man to rest by now. But here he lays. Did he not have a family? Any friends? Did no one miss him, or care enough to check on him? Or… was there no one left to do it? That makes me uneasy. And sad.

I added the rations and the medikit to my pack. It’s not much. But in this new world I’ll take everything I can get.

Left the trailer and pushed west for better elevation. Set up an overwatch on a ridge — careful not to silhouette against the sky. Hiding is a skill. One that I excel at. But trying to hide in a bright blue vault suit in the glowing light of morning is a clown college degree program. Anyone can do this when it’s easy, right?

The area looked clear. No hostiles visible. Sanctuary Hills appeared abandoned — but I wanted to confirm before I moved down into it. I stayed on the high ground, used the trees for cover, and circled the perimeter. From up there I could see the whole town. Still. Quiet. Crumbling. A ghost of what it used to be.

Then — movement. Fast. Coming in from my six, underground. A molerat. Bigger than anything I saw pre-war. Considerably bigger. I took it down with a security baton. Couldn’t risk a gunshot. Not until I knew what else was out there.

I kept circling southwest for another vantage point on the neighborhood.

Then I heard a woman’s voice — loud, profane, and extremely motivated. Then gunshots. I had my ten millimeter out and was already hitting the dirt before I’d consciously decided to move. She wasn’t firing in my direction — you learn to tell the difference after enough rounds come at you — but someone was definitely in a fight. A man’s voice. Calm. Almost bored. Declaring quick victory inevitable. Then a minigun.

I low-crawled to the ridge and looked over.

One woman with a crude pistol — clearly the aggressor, based on the language alone. One man in a full suit of T-60 power armor with a custom flame paint job. She lost. Quickly.

I stayed low and watched to see what he’d do. He just started walking away. He casually strolled off like he’d done this a hundred times and had somewhere better to be. This was not a soldier. And civilians didn’t have power armor. Pre-war, that wasn’t a thing that happened.

I needed information. He had it. My options were limited. So I broke protocol. I called out my position, stood up, raised my hands, and walked toward him slowly.

This was genuinely the stupidest thing I could have done.

I didn’t know this man. This man who’d just mowed down a woman and strolled away without breaking stride. I had a ten millimeter pistol and whatever reflexes I was still working with after two centuries on ice. A minigun takes a few seconds to spin up before it unleashes everything it has. I was banking on those seconds.

He didn’t shoot.

We had a perfectly civil conversation. His name is Duke. He runs with a group called the Atom Cats. Post-apocalyptic hot rodders who specialize in power armor. Of course that’s a thing. Why not.

He told me she was a raider. Shoot first, ask nothing, repeat — that’s their operating philosophy apparently. He let me loot her camp. Didn’t want anything from it himself. I picked up a pipe pistol, some thirty-eight rounds, leather scraps I might be able to rig into basic armor, whiskey, cram, and brass knuckles.

The amount of empty whiskey bottles scattered around that camp was impressive. It’s an apocalypse, and this lady was on a one-woman pub crawl.

While I was going through her camp, I looked out over the ridge. Sanctuary Hills was right there below me. Clear view of the whole neighborhood. I stood there for a moment thinking about that. If Duke hadn’t taken her out — she was in a perfect position to hit Sanctuary Hills whenever she felt like it. I can’t know if she would have. But she’s not going to now. This is just the reality of the world. Kill or be killed. That’s a reality I’m comfortable with.

I moved back to my overwatch position. Sanctuary Hills still looks empty. The only movement I can see from up here is some kind of giant flies circling a few of the abandoned houses.

Giant flies. Of course.

I swear — if giant spiders turn out to be a thing now, I’m done. Eight-foot irradiated spiders with a taste for human flesh? No. Absolutely not. I’ll find a different apocalypse. Thank you very much.

No signs of recent human activity down there. Just rot and ruin. Degraded — but stable enough. I’m calling Sanctuary Hills secure. For now.

It feels wrong though. Like standing inside a photograph of somewhere you used to dream about. Not somewhere you actually lived. Not somewhere your wife hung curtains and your son took his first breath.

How did it fall this far? Why didn’t anyone come back? Where is everybody?

Wait.

Is that — Codsworth?

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

Ol’ Nate can rest easy, I’d reckon. Never seen a giant, bloodthirsty spider. Giant flies though? Yep. And yep.

Now. I’ve lived out here my whole life. Mole rats, radscorpions, mirelurk colonies — that’s just a random Thursday. But hearing Nate process the wasteland through pre-war eyes? And in real time? Sugar… that’s priceless.

But I want to talk about two things from this tape that I think are worth sitting with for a second.

The first one most people probably just walked right past without a second thought. And that’s the security trailer. The bones of some random guard on the floor. And Nate — this man who has been awake for maybe six hours, who buried his grief under military discipline just to keep moving — stops. And he notices that nobody laid this man to rest. And it bothers him.

It. Bothers. Him.

Think about that. He’s got a murdered wife in a cryo pod. A stolen son somewhere out in the wasteland. Every reason in the world to keep his head down and just keep moving. And he stops for a stranger’s bones.

That’s who Nate Campbell is underneath all that soldier, under all that anger. Don’t forget it. Because the road ahead of him is going to ask him to set it aside plenty of times. Compassion and empathy — two things the world never has enough of.

What’s the second thing, you ask?

That moment with Duke, sugar.

Now. I want to be very clear about what Nate did there. He spotted a man in T-60 power armor with a minigun — a man who had just ended a woman without breaking stride — and he stood up. He walked towards him. On purpose.

Now, either he has a death wish — which, fair enough given the morning he’s had — or he is so completely certain of his own capabilities that a minigun at close range registered somewhere between mild inconvenience and manageable.

Sugar. That’s not a man you want hunting you. And if I had the chance to talk to the man who shot his wife… who stole his son… I’d offer this piece of advice.

Start running.

The signal’s been getting some courier traffic lately and I appreciate every letter. Gee Mail alone brought me three this past week — one smelled like whiskey and bad decisions. The fact that he was able to find his way to me at all is a minor miracle. Gee Mail’s never met a bar he doesn’t like.

Anyway. Keep em coming, my little devils. The courier network is always open.

Nate’s heading into Sanctuary Hills next. He’s going home. Now, what do y’all think he’ll find there?

My pappy used to say, “Home is just a bed that’s empty… or not.”

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP05: Home

Nate heads home for the first time since the bombs dropped. Now... What do you think he'll find there?

DUSTY’S INTRO

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little wasteland wanderers. The fire is already roarin’. So pull up a comfy seat and set yer ears right. Because on today’s tape, ol’ Nate shows a side we ain’t seen yet. And sugar, Nate blurts out a tale that you may have to listen to twice. Something I guarantee you’ve never heard before.

But I’m gettin’ ahead of myself here. I’m just too darn excited for you to hear today’s tape!

This tape closes out day one for him. And sugar, I reckon one day has never been so full of heartbreak, fury, and sheer stubborn survival for any one man in the history of the Commonwealth.

He’s watched bombs drop, been frozen, seen his wife murdered, his child taken, found out the world ended, and is scared there might be eight-foot tall irradiated spiders. Sugar… that’s a full day for anyone. Let’s hear how he closes it out, shall we?

Tape four is now rolling.

NATE’S HOLOTAPE

October 23rd, 2287. Log zero-zero-four. It’s the end of Day One.

I made my way down the path towards Sanctuary Hills just as the sun was setting behind me. Halfway down the hill, I just stopped. The heaviness of it all just… settled in. I stood there for a few minutes. Our neighborhood… it’s in ruins.

The house. Our house. Is still there… barely. Twisted siding. Half the roof collapsed. Dead trees and shrubbery. Everything broken and destroyed.

There was no need to rush down there. It was clear that nothing was left to rush down to.

No. That wasn’t exactly true. There was someone. Well… something… waiting for me down there.

Codsworth.

He was still there. Still operational. Still trying to make believe everything was the same. That nothing had changed. He was trimming a dead hedge in front of our home when I walked up to him.

I asked him why he didn’t look for us. Why didn’t he help? He said he waited. Said he pinged Vault 111 every day… but never got a reply. So he kept trying. Every day. For two hundred and ten years.

Maybe… maybe I should be mad. I mean, he could’ve done more. He should have done more.

But mostly… I’m just tired. Besides, what could he actually have done anyway?

I dropped it and walked into our home.

Inside was a mess. But somehow also organized. Tidy. The windows were all broken out. There was a huge hole in the roof. But the countertops were clean. Hell, even the silverware was neatly placed in the drawer. My Grognak the Barbarian comic was on the counter. Right where I’d left it before the bombs fell.

Go figure. Even in an apocalypse, Codsworth was holding on to as much normal as he could. Alone. Two hundred and ten years… alone. That seems like more than enough punishment for me thinking he didn’t do enough.

He just kept doing what he could. And I suppose that’s all we can do. Keep moving. Keep living. You can’t control what happens to you in life. You can only control how you react to what happens.

As a special operator, I was trained to accept reality for what it is in the moment. Then act. Overcome it. No questioning, no trying to make sense of it… just action. Hesitation will get you or a teammate killed.

During training, we were constantly put in situations beyond our understanding of reality. Each situation designed to push those limits a little further. I remember one exercise that really drove this point home.

We were conducting small group urban warfighter tactics. I was on point. Leading my team through a building clearing exercise. We’d already cleared the first two floors. I kicked open a door on the third floor… and there, in the middle of a room full of creepy porcelain dolls… was a werewolf with a machine gun.

Yep.

A goddamn werewolf. Standing right in the middle of a room full of creepy porcelain dolls. Holding a machine gun pointed right at me and my team.

I stopped. I hesitated. I laughed. I confused my team. I was just trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Make sense out of the absurdity.

Then that machine gun roared to life and lit us up before any of us could react. Me, Jax, and Delacruz… killed. Because of my inaction. My indecision. Lucky for us, that machine gun was firing rubber bullets. Because in the real world… mistakes like that are permanent.

The rest of my team? Wounded. With one — Ramirez, my friend — captured.

They tortured him that night. He had to endure hours of very real torture. And we had to listen to it.

That was on me. That should have been me… not him.

I failed myself and my team.

You simply can’t afford to reason out why there’s a werewolf holding a machine gun. You just have to react. Take all available information in, make a split-second decision, and act on it. No questions, no hesitation. Good, bad, or indifferent — you make a call and act. Period.

After the threat is neutralized, you can come to terms with the fact that there was a werewolf in the first place. But your new reality is… werewolves are real. And they carry weapons. Why is of no consequence. Only this new reality matters. You act, overcome, adapt… and you stay alive.

That was a crazy and valuable lesson. A mistake I will never make again.

This new world has giant bugs. Giant mole rats. Crazy people that want to do me harm. And who knows what else is out there waiting. I’ve already spent too much time trying to figure out how we got here. That’s for some other time. Maybe after I find my son Shaun.

Right now… I don’t care if Santa Claus himself is twenty feet tall and carrying a mini-nuke. I’m taking him down. Nothing else matters but finding my son.

I made my way down the hall. To Shaun’s room. To his crib.

It was still there. Burned. Broken… and bent… but upright. His blanket was mostly ash. But a piece of it — just the corner — was still intact. It still had that little rocket logo stitched on it.

I picked it up. I didn’t even realize I was crying until I wiped my face.

I’m coming, buddy.

I put that little piece of hope in my pocket.

As I looked down to gather my thoughts… on the floor… I found his favorite You’re SPECIAL book. I couldn’t pick that up though. Partly because my sanity wouldn’t let me… and partly because I was too afraid it would fall apart. I just couldn’t handle it if that book fell apart. I’m barely hanging on as it is.

Nora and I used to read it to him every night. Used to.

I left the book where it was.

I walked into our bedroom. Didn’t stay long. Nora’s dresser was crushed under a support beam. One of her shirts — a green one with embroidery on the collar — was draped over the edge. Ragged and singed. But I could still see it.

Nora was the only woman that truly got me. That really understood me. She knew about my rocky past. My troubled upbringing. She knew my parents couldn’t have cared less about me. The anchor that kept them from achieving their dreams — a fact they were all too happy to tell me every single day.

She knew I ran away from home at thirteen. Joined the Army at seventeen. She didn’t judge me. Never pressed me. To her, our pasts didn’t matter. Only our future did.

She knew everything about me.

No. That’s not true.

She knew I was a soldier. But she didn’t know I’d been recruited into a deep cover special operations unit. I hated lying to her… but her and Shaun’s safety was at stake.

Maybe that’s why she was killed and Shaun was taken.

My team and I were investigating big tech companies… including Vault-Tec… when the bombs fell. Maybe we got too close. Maybe my cover was blown.

I was lost in my thoughts… staring down a rabbit hole I didn’t have time for… when Codsworth’s buzzsaw whirred outside the bedroom window and cut right through it.

I needed to move. So when he asked for help clearing the remaining houses of bloatflies… I didn’t hesitate. I needed something to kill. Codsworth took out three before I even rounded the corner. He might be of some use after all. I took out the remaining ones with a few shots from the pipe pistol. It only lasted a few minutes… but it was just what I needed to get my mind back.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning up. Found a couple of safes.

One house with yellow siding, second from the corner, had a trap wired to the lock. Tension trigger. Rookie setup — wire was completely exposed. Sloppy work. I cut the line with a small knife from the kitchen and cracked the safe. Got some pre-war money, a small pistol, a forty-four. No ammo, but it’s a nice find. Oh yeah, and a watch. It’s important to be thorough.

Couple houses east of mine, I found a small homemade fallout shelter hidden behind a blue house. Couldn’t place who it belonged to though. I can picture his face… name started with a “J” I think. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t what you might call the neighborly type.

It smelled like mildew and bad memories down there. So I left the door open to air it out. Inside? Three gold bars, a mattress that’s seen better centuries… and a bunch of junk. I bagged the cash and the gold bars. Not sure if gold’s worth anything anymore… but gold has always meant trade. Or maybe hope. Either way, it’s in my pack now. He did a good job building it — heavy metal door that can be secured.

This place, Sanctuary Hills… it’s just not my home anymore.

But I’m going to rest in the bunker tonight. I’m just too tired to do anything else. Probably too wired to sleep… but I have to try.

I’m no good to Shaun if I’m not thinking straight.

Fact is… home’s gone. Nora’s gone. But Shaun’s out there… somewhere. And I’m still breathing.

That’s enough to keep me going.

Codsworth told me people are in Concord. I’m heading that way tomorrow. It’s time to start getting some answers about my son.

DUSTY’S OUTRO

Whew.

I’ll be honest, sugar. I don’t even know where to start.

Our boy Nate had himself one hell of a first day… didn’t he? Why, I reckon he’d had a harder day than a one-legged brahmin on skates. Nate kind of uncorked and things just started to flow out… makes sense, really. He’d been holding in so much for so long.

I suppose it has to come out one way or the other.

There he was, standing on the hill looking at his old neighborhood when it all became real… all at once. Meanwhile, his old house robot was trying to hold life together too. That didn’t go unnoticed by Nate. He had his own troubles, and many people would have taken it all out on Codsworth if they were in that position. But Nate… he felt sorry for him. That says something, sugar.

“You can’t control what happens to you in life, only how you react to what happens.” That’s powerful stuff right there. Didn’t know our boy was a philosopher.

That’s a side we hadn’t seen yet. Well, then he just casually rolls out a werewolf story… like that’s just a thing that happens. And sugar, the way he tells it — so matter of fact, so completely unbothered — that’s when I knew exactly what kind of man Nate Campbell really is.

But it’s a moment he cannot forget. A moment he can’t forgive himself for. I’ve got moments like that. We all do… don’t we, sugar? Times in our life that we wish we could go back and do over. Make a different decision. But there’s no reload in life. So you just try to do better today than you did yesterday. And that is exactly what Nate’s doing… or trying to do at least. That moment made him a better leader, a better warrior… and probably a better husband.

Life doesn’t wait for you to be ready though. And I don’t think he was ready to go back to Shaun’s room. To his crib. That moment hit me real hard, my little devils. Hearing him whisper “I’m coming, buddy…” Well. My eyes almost sprung a leak.

He knows how close to the edge he’s standing. Maybe you are there yourself. Standing on the edge… staring into the darkness, reliving your mistakes. Well, sugar, if that’s you — then be like Nate and step back and find the light. Whatever that is for you.

Usually it’s the little things in life. For Nate, it was something to kill. I wouldn’t recommend that choice, unless you can find some bloatflies. Seriously though — just breathing is enough.

May you always find the light in the dark. Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP06: Partner

Nate learns the Wasteland will always surprise ya...

DUSTY’S INTRO

Welcome back to The Dusty Signal, my little devils.

Pull up close. I got the fire burnin’ low tonight… that just felt right for today’s tape.

Now. Last time we left our boy, he was closing out the hardest day any man’s had since the bombs fell. If you missed it… do yourself a favor and give it a listen. That tape just might get you through your tough day.

Today’s tape is day two for our boy Nate. And sugar, he finds out the wasteland will always surprise ya.

He’s moving. He’s thinking. He’s building something out of nothing — one decision at a time. And somewhere between Sanctuary Hills and a cave full of hate and bad decisions…

He finds himself a friend.

Now I don’t want to say too much… but if you’ve ever had a moment — you know those moments — where the universe just drops exactly what you needed right in front of you, right when you needed it most…

Then sugar… you don’t want to miss this.

Tape five is now rolling.

 

NATE’S HOLOTAPE

October 24th, 2287. Log zero-zero-five. Day Two.

Slept in the doomsday cellar last night. I just… I couldn’t sleep in my house. Not under that roof. I got maybe five hours, off and on. In the Army they teach you how to sleep anywhere. Well, it’s less of a taught skill and more an acquired one. You just learn to take a few minutes of sleep when you get the chance… because you may go days without it. That’s a skill that comes in handy.

When I laid down, I crashed from exhaustion. But the dreams… the dreams… I could have done without the dreams. I dreamt Shaun was an old man. And when I found him, he looked right through me like I was nothing. Like I didn’t matter at all. He asked me why I bothered looking for him.

What the actual shit was that? Yeah. That one was rough.

I left before sunrise. Codsworth hovered nearby when I climbed out of the cellar. He wanted to come with me. Maybe I should’ve let him. But I prefer stealth. And a floating tin can with anxiety and a buzzsaw isn’t exactly built for subtlety. I moved out alone. Fast. Quiet. Eyes open. Kept my profile low. Took the road east, past the bridge toward Concord.

Just over the bridge, I saw bodies in the road. I froze. Weapon up. Scanned the treeline, the road, the rooftops… anywhere that could hide a threat. The area looked clear, so I approached the bodies slowly and assessed the scene. One was a man… dressed like the raider I saw yesterday. He was very dead. Next to him… what I thought was a dog. Or what dogs are now, I suppose. Hairless. Wrong-looking. Like a half-starved mongrel with a tire iron jammed into its side. The scene painted the whole story in red. The mongrel went for him. He fought back. He bled out anyway. The bite was viciously deep. Femoral artery. Not much you can do for that… even in the old world.

I took what I could use. Don’t judge me. There’s no stores out here, no resupply. No mercy either. I stripped a short double-barrel shotgun with a single shell, a few thirty-eight rounds, a couple stimpaks — he should have used them, but good for me — and his coat. It fit, and will keep the wind off. Shaun needs me alive. That’s the only thing that matters. Stealing from the dead does not.

As I kept moving, I spotted something that made my skin crawl. An Army duffle bag laying out in full view near the base of the Minuteman statue. An Army duffle doesn’t just sit there untouched in a world full of scavengers… unless it’s being used as bait. I stared at it for a long moment. Greed is how you get dead. I left it. Kept moving. I don’t know what I can trust in this world. I don’t know if I can trust anyone at all.

I was spending too much time being cautious. I need to find a balanced approach between my safety and finding my son. It was getting darker than it should’ve been as I approached the Red Rocket sign up ahead. It was lit. Power? In the middle of nothing? That means occupied… or it means a trap. I went low, moved off-road and used the terrain — bushes, broken concrete, anything I could to stay hidden. I watched the station for movement for what seemed like hours. Nothing moved. No shadows, no silhouettes, no voices. Just the hum of something still alive in the wires.

Then I heard… a bark.

I froze so hard I would have pissed ice cubes. My 10mm came up without thinking… scanning. And out of the dark… casual as you please… walked a German Shepherd. Healthy and clean. Alert eyes. Tail wagging. Not feral. Not starved. Not scared. He moved like a trained police dog. He moved like somebody’s partner. He came right up to me like we’d known each other for years. I checked his collar. The tag said “Dogmeat.”

Huh. Dogmeat.

He looked at me like I was the one who was lost. There was something strangely familiar about him. He looks exactly like our old dog, River.

My first thought was: he belongs to someone. And if he belongs to someone… that someone is nearby. So I stayed sharp. I was scanning the station when Dogmeat suddenly snapped to attention — ears up, posture tight — and bolted toward the forecourt barking. Loudly.

That’s when the ground erupted.

Mole rats. Big ones. They popped up all around him like mines going off. I fired. Measured breaths, controlled trigger pulls… double taps each, center mass. I dropped the nearest one before it could latch on. Dogmeat didn’t panic. He didn’t run. He just went to work. Fast. Violent. Efficient. Like he’d done it before. In less than a minute, it was over. No owner came out. No voices. No lights changing. Just the two of us standing there with blood in the dirt.

The station was empty. But it was intact. A workshop. Tools. Benches. A door that still seals. Medical supplies. Junk that can become something useful. I walked the perimeter and checked all angles — one road in, good visibility, elevated defensive positions. This place can be fortified. It can be held. It can be used. I’m calling it Forward Base Alpha.

Inside the office, the terminal still worked. I pulled the service logs. Mostly noise… old repair entries. But I found one entry that was worth laughing at. That Vault-Tec salesman — the one chosen by the ones pulling the strings — used to bring his van here monthly. And the station manager labeled him in the records as the “uppity asshole.” Yeah. That tracks. He could sell a stranger a spot in a vault, but he couldn’t sell himself on being tolerable for five minutes.

Asshole or not… he didn’t deserve to get locked out of the very vault he was tasked with filling. We walked right past him at the security gate. Sirens blaring. Panic all around. Him begging to be let in. Told he would be shot if he tried to enter… only to be atomized when the bombs fell. Hell… he got off easy, as it turned out.

The terminal also mentioned a nearby cave. Said they used it for storage when inspectors showed up. Which is corporate language for hiding something ugly and probably illegal. But if this is going to be my base… it has to be safe. And whatever’s down there has to be removed.

Dogmeat tracked the scent south. We moved in quiet. Heel to toe. Slow and easy. Weight low and centered. Knees bent. The dog stayed close. He didn’t rush, didn’t break cover… didn’t make a sound. Like he understood the assignment. The cave mouth had a faint green glow. Radiation. I checked my Pip-Boy, watched the readings, and slipped inside.

The walls were alive with fungus. Brain fungus. I remembered it from my training briefs. Useful for chems if you know what you’re doing. I gathered what I could. I’m not trying to become the drug dealer of the apocalypse. But I need supplies. Supplies come from trade. Trade comes from value. And I have this sneaky suspicion that drugs will be high value trade items. That’s just the new law.

Deeper in, I heard them. Scratching. Heavy movement. Too heavy. Mole rats nesting in the back chamber… bigger than the ones outside. Hazardous waste barrels were stacked like somebody’s dirty secret. So that’s what Red Rocket was doing? Poisoning the ground and burying the evidence.

I lined up my first shot from the shadows and dropped one before it could react. After that, they rushed. A suppressor would’ve been nice. As an aside — most people think a suppressor makes a gun silent. It does not. It, as the name suggests, suppresses the sound. They are designed to disguise the sound so that it’s easily dismissed as some random noise. But it absolutely makes noise. I digress.

Four of them charged right at us. Dogmeat lunged the moment the fight started. No hesitation. I kept my muzzle steady, used the cavern walls to funnel them, and we cleared the nest without any difficulty. One of them had to weigh two hundred pounds. Mutated muscle and hate.

Past the nest, I found a corporate plaque and a memo. Turns out the employees used this cave to illegally dump contaminated waste so efficiently they won an award for environmental cleanup. Congratulations, Red Rocket. Best in class at poisoning the ground. Hell of a legacy.

In the back, under a rusted generator, I found a fusion core. That was a huge score. I don’t have power armor yet… but now I’ve got the heart that runs it, and a place to keep it running.

Back at the station, I started building a routine. Scouting the perimeter, gathering resources, cleaning up and building defenses. I found a trunk with ammo and a knife. Sorted my supplies and stored the junk I didn’t need on my back. It’s not pretty. It’s not home. But it’s a foothold.

I started these logs as a way to keep track of things for myself. My ears only. My notes. But the world needs to know. My family deserves more. If I die out here… someone will know what happened. Someone will know who Nora was. Who Shaun was. Who I was… when the world ended.

Mission remains unchanged. My priority is unchanged. Locate and retrieve Shaun. Nothing else matters.

 

DUSTY’S OUTRO

Dogmeat.

I mean… [PAUSE] just — Dogmeat.

That dog walked out of the dark like he’d been waiting on Nate specifically. Like the universe said — this man has been through enough, give him something good. And out comes a German Shepherd, healthy and clean, moving like somebody’s partner, looking at Nate like HE was the one who was lost…

Sugar, I’ve seen a lot of things out here in the wasteland. A LOT of things…

That dog? That dog is something special. You mark my words.[PAUSE] 

Now. Two things from this tape I want to sit with for a second…

The first one — that Army duffle bag just sitting out in the open near the statue.

Nate saw it. Stared at it. And walked away.

Now, most people out here — hungry, scared, running low on everything — they pick up that bag. Most folks don’t look beyond the bag… don’t think over the downsides, the potential dangers. They just reach for it… maybe nothing happens. Maybe its filled with ammo and supplies and nothing else… but…

“Greed is how you get dead.” He said it himself. [PAUSE] Sugar, that’s not just wasteland wisdom. That’s just… wisdom. How many times in life have we reached for the thing that was sitting out just a little too perfect… a little too convenient… and paid for it later?

Nate’s been awake for less than two days and he’s already smarter than most people who’ve lived out here their whole lives. [PAUSE] This man has been trained… I’m not sure what a special operator even is… but, they must be highly trained. Nate doesn’t miss much.[PAUSE] 

The second thing.

That moment at the end of the tape.

He started these logs for himself… just notes, just a way to hold on. But somewhere between Shaun’s crib and a cave full of corporate shame… something shifted.

[QUIET] If I die out here… someone will know what happened. Someone will know who Nora was. Who Shaun was.

Who I was… when the world ended.[BEAT] 

Sugar. [LONG PAUSE]

That’s not a man making recordings anymore. That’s a man building a legacy. For his family. Out of nothing but a Pip-Boy and whatever time he’s got left.

I don’t know about y’all… but that hit me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

Now… Red Rocket. [CHUCKLE]

Best in class at environmental cleanup. Won an AWARD for it! All while illegally dumping contaminated waste in a cave fifty feet from their own building…

[DRY] They say, war never changes… but, neither does human nature. [PAUSE] We humans have a knack for finding the easiest path without worrying about the effect that path might have on us, our community, or the wasteland. Well, at least the Mole rats got something out of it! [PAUSE] 

Forward Base Alpha is established. Dogmeat is on board. And Nate Campbell — soldier, grieving father… killer. — is building something in the ruins of a world that forgot he existed.

Stay close to the signal, little devils. There’s much more to his story.

 

But now, I want to hear about YOUR story. Grab one of the couriers that are scuttlin’ about and send me a letter. Introduce yourself… say what you like about this little show… what you don’t like about it. How can I do a better job for ya? What you ate for dinner, where your from… where your cap stash is kept. [LAUGH] Something. Anything. I just want to hear from you. Get to know you, my dear listener. I haven’t seen that Hot Mail Girl lately… grab her and send me a note.

Until then… keep your whistle wet and your bed dry.

 

Stay alive… 

Stay strange…

Dusty out.

EP07: Choices

Day three in the wasteland and Nate Campbell is already knee-deep in raiders, pool cues, and other people's problems. Sugar, this man can't even walk to Concord without starting a war.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back to the signal, my little devils. 

The fire is roaring tonight so get yerself a comfy seat and lean in… 

because you aint gonna want to miss this…

Sometimes the universe gives you a gift.

Sometimes, a kick in the teeth…

Honey, today it gave us both.

Holotape seven is now live.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

Log zero-zero-six. October twenty-fifth, 2287. Day Three started very early.

I finally ate something… I guess you could say I’ve been on a two-hundred and ten year fast. I didn’t even realize I was hungry until Dogmeat started begging for something. So I cooked up some mole rat for him… and damn if that didn’t smell delicious. I took it easy though. I don’t need the shits to take me down before a bullet can.

I spent all day and into the night cleaning up and organizing. I made a makeshift sleeping area with a bed and a trunk for storage. Forward Base Alpha is now stable. Not fortified yet, but it’s stable. I needed to get some answers though, so it was time to move out.

I started my trip toward Concord before the sun was even up. Followed the old road east. The layout’s still burned into my head from our prewar days. That’s such a crazy thing to say, because for me that feels like two days ago. Only now… it’s not the same town. Back when we were dating, Nora and I would take walks in the park in Concord. Hell, that’s probably where Shaun was conceived. Relax… it was in the middle of the night. We were alone. I think.

Nora was a woman that wasn’t afraid to push boundaries. That’s one of the reasons she was such a great lawyer, and certainly one of the reasons I loved her so much. She was looking forward to returning to her career after Shaun started school. She always said people needed to stand up and fight for what was right. She lived those words all the way to her last breath.

I was lost in my thoughts when I heard gunfire in the distance. I snapped out of my haze and focused. I have got to stay more focused. Complacency is a soldier’s worst enemy. Nothing will get you killed faster than losing focus.

I took a knee behind a small retaining wall and listened. Dogmeat, ever the professional, was quietly by my side. It was clear from the sound of the fighting that it was a few blocks ahead. We were not in immediate danger, and that meant I could gather intel and make a plan.

I quickly scanned the area for a way off the street and to some better cover. Up ahead I saw a house on the right side of the road. Mostly boarded-up windows, an open entry door hanging loose on its hinges, but a second floor. That’ll give me a possible view of the action while remaining hidden. Whenever possible, elevated positions are your friend. Dogmeat was right at my heels as I approached the house, ten millimeter in my hands, scanning for targets and potential threats.

Clearing a room alone is much more dangerous than with a team. With a team, each person has their preassigned area to scan, thus the entire room is cleared of threats quickly and efficiently. Clearing alone gives you a lot more to think about.

To start — you have to know which way the door opens. In or out. Which side does it open to? Right or left? This seemingly simple information could save your life when someone is waiting in the area blocked by that opened door, ready to kill you. And that’s just the first thing you have to think about.

Two-story homes are their own set of problems. Every doorway is a choke point. Every staircase is a gamble. You don’t stand in a doorway unless you want to be shot. Standing in the open doorway puts your silhouette in plain view, so you might as well enter the room with a bullseye on your forehead. Stay out of this fatal frame as much as possible. Remain outside the threshold and work the angles. Slow. Patient. Don’t rush. Peel them open one slice at a time. Shift your position and expose a little more of the interior with every step taken. The deeper corners get your attention first — places someone would hide if they wanted you dead. Keep a low profile, controlled and measured. No dramatic hero walk-ins. Hug the wall, finish scanning what you couldn’t see from outside, and keep moving. Clear. Control. Move. Then repeat.

Take your time. That’s the part most people get wrong. Slow feels dangerous, but rushing? That will get you killed more times than it won’t. You listen before you move. Floors creak. Air shifts. Breathing carries.

Clearing a house alone is just plain stupid. Even the most experienced operators hate doing it. Fortunately for me, I have Dogmeat, and he seems pretty keen on picking up and identifying threats. The house was cleared in short order.

I couldn’t see the action in Concord from the second floor, so I gathered more supplies. There was a fridge in the kitchen that held a bottle of Nuka-Cola Quantum. I remember when they released that in late 2077. “Twice the calories, twice the carbohydrates, twice the caffeine, and twice the taste!” Every other commercial was for that stuff. But my buddy at the Pentagon told me to avoid it. Said it was an offshoot from a weapons program or some shit. Is there no end to the debauchery of the corporate world?

Upstairs I found a mattress — moldy but usable. A small box was tucked behind an overturned nightstand with some drugs in it. What a sad snapshot of someone’s existence. I also found a couple of stimpaks and Med-X. There was an advanced wall safe behind a painting. Took me far too much effort… but it cracked. Some bottle caps in a small tin container — not sure if these things are collectibles now or something, why were they in the safe? — some thirty-eight rounds, and a letter to some guy named Ryan Jenkins. It seems he was supposed to look for the Wyatt family, a villainous cult of some kind that lives in Far Harbor. He was to gather information about them for a research project for Vault-Tec. I took the letter. I was gathering intel on Vault-Tec when the bombs dropped. This could be helpful to that investigation.

I’m going to rest here for an hour and check my gear… I can hear trouble up ahead, I’ll avoid it if I can. But, I need to be prepared for anything. So, inventory rundown. I have both of my ten millimeter pistols, and almost 90 rounds, but I also grabbed a pipe pistol with about 20 rounds. This will be my primary weapon, if I need to use any… I need to keep the tens in peak shape. The magazines are set up on my gear to be easily swapped out when needed.

I have my combat knife and six stimpaks. Some Rad-x and food and water for two days. I’m also carrying the fusion core… those caps that seem to be valuable for some reason. Money, and a single gold bar are in my pack right next to enough chems to put down a T-Rex… Trade only…

The rest of my gear I left back at forward base alpha, locked away.

I’m going to rest here for an hour and check my gear… I can hear trouble up ahead, I’ll avoid it if I can. But, I need to be prepared for anything. So, inventory rundown. I have both of my ten millimeter pistols, and almost 90 rounds, but I also grabbed a pipe pistol with about 20 rounds. This will be my primary weapon, if I need to use any… I need to keep the tens in peak shape. The magazines are set up on my gear to be easily swapped out when needed.

I have my combat knife and six stimpaks. Some Rad-x and food and water for two days. I’m also carrying the fusion core… those caps that seem to be valuable for some reason. Money, and a single gold bar are in my pack right next to enough chems to put down a T-Rex… Trade only…

The rest of my gear I left back at forward base alpha, locked away.

I’m gonna pause this recording while I clean my weapons and properly pack my gear for a fight I hope I can avoid… I’ll pick it back up later, if I’m still alive.

Log zero, zero, six, continued… October twenty-fifth, twenty two eighty seven.
 

I left out the back door and saw three surviving gourd plants. Bagged the seeds. They might be useful if I stick around long enough to grow anything somewhere. Still, it feels wrong. Looting someone’s home. I’m not sure I will ever feel like it’s the right thing to do. But it seems like the only thing you can do to stay alive in this new world.

As I rounded the corner towards the Museum of Freedom, I saw movement ahead. Just past the “Celebrate Freedom” banner. Smoke trails, explosions, gunfire, and people. I took cover in an alley behind a collapsed building and made my way towards the action. Five hostiles outside the museum with pipe rifles, improvised armor… and aggression.

Not my fight.

I was looking for a way around when I saw the guy they were firing at on the balcony. Shit.

They’ve got someone cornered in there. Civilians maybe. Hostages, probably. Could be a gang turf fight though… but something told me it was bigger than that. Dogmeat was keyed in instantly. He wanted to help, whether I was going to or not.

I flanked the museum from the south wall. Elevation gives me the advantage. My plan was to eliminate their overwatch, then force them into the open. The raiders were keyed in on that guy on the balcony, so the first tango was easy pickings. But after his head popped from my thirty-eight round, his buddies zeroed in on my location very quickly. Dogmeat took off like he was shot out of a cannon and just leapt on the closest raider — teeth latched on the poor bastard’s throat. It was over quickly. I shot the third one, a woman, while on the run. Two in the chest, one to the face.

I doubled back and came up the main street to get behind the remaining two. I was hoping the guy on the balcony wasn’t going to mistake me for a raider. He was firing a laser weapon of some kind. He ceased fire as I came up behind the two raiders hitting Dogmeat with pool cues. I double-tapped their brain pans and was at Dogmeat’s side before their corpses hit the pavement. He was a little worse for wear, but was okay.

The guy on the balcony told me to grab the laser musket and get inside the museum. He said there were more raiders attacking them. Them? That meant more people were inside. Trapped. I didn’t need this. I didn’t have time. But my gut was telling me answers for Shaun were inside. So I went in.

Inside, the second and third floors were mostly gone. You could see straight through the glass roof to the clear blue morning sky above. It was such a stark contrast. Beauty and debris. So strange.

There were raiders on either side of the second floor ledge firing at someone above. I did grab that laser musket on the way in. Figured it would have better range, and besides, I was dangerously low on thirty-eight ammo.

I lined up a headshot for the woman on the left and squeezed the trigger. Click. What the hell? I’m not sure how she heard me over the shooting, but as if on cue, the woman turned around and started firing at me. I was hit in the left arm. Round exited clean, no bone impact. But damn, it hurt. I ducked behind a column and looked the rifle over. On the back there was a handle that cranked, so I cranked. That charged up the rifle. I peered out and lined up my shot once again… and zap. Headshot for the win. Her body didn’t fall. It just disintegrated into a pile of ash. I think I’ll like this thing.

Okay. Now I know how to use it. Crank. Shoot. Second dead raider.

Dogmeat wasn’t waiting around for my victory speech though. He bolted up the steps and to the right and I followed. The hallway led to a room with a display and a speaker blaring. I almost shot one of the mannequins — adrenaline was running high. I was following Dogmeat’s direction and he would attack any real threats.

And he did just that as we rounded the corner towards the big staircase. Remember earlier when I said don’t stand in doorways? Well, this dumbass was doing just that. Bad decision on his part. He made it super easy for Dogmeat to find his arm and for me to relieve him of any further decision making opportunities. Another ash pile.

I was really digging this rifle, but it’s designed for range, not close quarters, and I knew from a tour of this museum that the rooms ahead were tight. So I slung the rifle and drew my ten millimeter just as we bound up the stairs and met another raider. He had a pool cue. What is it with these guys and pool cues? He telegraphed the swing, which allowed me to step into it so the cue missed and went behind me, putting us face to face. At the same time I raised my pistol in an uppercut motion to just under his chin and squeezed the trigger.

If you’ve never done something like this before, allow me to give you some advice. Close your mouth. A bullet passing through a head at supersonic speed does massive damage and creates back pressure. Stuff inside goes out every open hole. So if you have your mouth open, you will taste a combination of saliva, blood, mucus, and brain matter. It is vile. So… close your mouth.

Anyway. We moved down a hallway and could hear an argument up ahead. One raider trying to convince the other to just leave. He should’ve listened. I snuck up on them and shot deaf ears in the back of the head from an opening in a broken section of wall. Dogmeat rounded the corner and took down the other as I entered the room. I shot him as I walked by. Then we just followed the path through the broken wall until we heard one of these yahoos making ridiculous threats through a locked door. Another guy was with him asking him to just leave. And yet again, he didn’t listen.

As a special operator I’d been all over the globe fighting the worst of humankind. From Boston to China. But I have never dealt with bad guys this predictable and pathetic. As I rounded the corner, I shit you not — this asshat came at me with a pool cue. I put three ten millimeter rounds in his face and Dogmeat took the other one to the ground. I should have killed him, but I just watched. Waited. I’m not sure why. Maybe this guy reminded me of the piece of shit that shot Nora. Maybe I was just angry at the whole thing. I don’t know. He died a slow and painful death. I’m not proud of that.

The door opened and Dogmeat bounded inside, tail wagging. What the hell is it with that dog? There was a small group of people inside and their leader, a guy named Preston, approached me. He said he was with a group called the Minutemen, but these five were the only ones left. Apparently they got ambushed by a group of ghouls in Lexington. I asked him what ghouls were. He was confused, but explained them to me. Kind of sounded like a zombie to me. Great. Can’t wait to meet these fellas.

Preston said not all ghouls are bad though, and that I’d know the bad ones straight away. He called them feral ghouls, and they attack on sight. Holy hell, what other evils can this apocalyptic world spit out? Whatever. It doesn’t matter right now anyway.

Preston said if I helped them, they could help me. I’ll be honest — I wanted to punch him in his face. What the hell did he think I was doing? Did he not see the dead raiders strewn about? Was all of that not helping?

But I didn’t punch him. I just listened. He said they had a plan, then some guy named Sturges told me that there was a crashed Vertibird on the roof and a set of T-45 power armor next to it. The T-45 power armor was introduced in 2067 by West Tek and helped American troops fight the Chinese invasion in Alaska. I got very familiar with it while I was in the Army in Anchorage. This is the first series for power armor and it lacks in the mobility department, but it allows you to carry much heavier weapons and offers pretty good protection. All of which I could use.

Sturges said there was a fusion core downstairs, locked behind a security gate. Nobody in their group could bypass the security terminal to access it. Their position was — if I could get the fusion core and get into the suit, the remaining raiders outside would be no problem. I wanted to tell him the raiders would be no problem anyway, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

I told them I would help and set out to grab the fusion core. I didn’t tell them I already had one either. Because two fusion cores are better than one.

On my way down I looted the bodies of the fallen raiders for supplies. I added a lot to my backpack. Some food, a spare pipe pistol, a pipe rifle with better range inside buildings, one double barrel shotgun, and three Molotov cocktails. Ammo for all of it, plus a few .308 rounds. I so hope I find a rifle for them — long range sniping is my specialty. Chems, of course. These idiots do love their chems. And two more stimpaks. Those were a great find and gave me the opportunity to fix my left arm, so I used one on the spot. They also had bobby pins, which are fantastic for picking locks. Some cash. And all of them had bottle caps in their pockets — these must be of some value now — so I took them. I also grabbed a few pieces of armor that I can work into something else later. I’m not trying to look like these fools. I just want the added protection.

I made it down to the basement and pretty easily bypassed the security terminal. Now, I’m not trying to sound like a jerk here, but education must not be a priority in society anymore. That security terminal was very basic to hack. It took me less than a minute. And no one in their group could do it? The world takes all kinds. But yikes.

I grabbed the fusion core and headed back upstairs for that power armor. I still hadn’t decided if I was actually going to help them, or if I was just grabbing the power armor and splitting.

As I passed by the group, an old lady in a chair warned me to be careful of something out there and that it was angry. Ummm… okay… thanks, lady. I looked around at this group of misfits. They looked like they’ve been through hell. I felt like the world’s biggest asshole for even thinking about abandoning these folks. Nora would be ashamed of me.

I went out on the roof and loaded up the fusion core. The power armor hummed to life. I don’t know what that old lady meant, but her words — or maybe the way she said them — they’re weighing on me as I record this standing in front of the open power armor. Whatever she meant. Whatever is waiting for me down there. They need my help. I can’t be a selfish person. This new world has too many of them already. I’m going to face whatever it is. I hope I get to tell the tale later.

But if I die today, I hope someone finds these recordings. I hope Shaun lives a meaningful life. I hope Nora’s memory lives on and inspires people to keep fighting. I hope… I hope I don’t die today.

This is Nate Campbell — father, husband, and special operator. Out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

WHEW!… there is ALOT to get to with this one, Sugar.

 

I’ve listened to this tape several times… and I’ll be honest with you — I don’t quite know where to start. So…[PAUSE] 

 

The park. Concord.

 

Now… Nate Campbell just casually mentioned that Concord’s town park may just be where his son was conceived??… in the middle of the night??… and he THINKS  they were alone…

 

He THINKS?!?

 

Sugar, that man woke up from a two hundred and ten year frozen nap… fought his way through a building full of Raiders… and the one thing he’s a little fuzzy on… is whether or not anyone saw him and his wife in that park having some fun?[CHUCKLE] 

 

That Nora sounds like she was one hell of a woman. She really does…

 

Now, let’s talk about what happened before he even got to Concord. Because this man… this man can NOT turn his brain off. Not even when he’s alone.

He’s always teaching. Explaining sight lines to nobody. Breaking down fatal frames and choke points and door hinge directions like there’s a class full of recruits hanging on his every word.[BEAT] 

There’s not of course. It’s just a Pip-Boy and Dogmeat.

 

But… he can’t help it. 

 

That’s not just a soldier’s habit my Little Devils… that’s a leader’s instinct. You don’t teach because someone told you to. You teach because you can not… NOT teach. Because somewhere deep in the wiring of a person like that… knowledge hoarded is knowledge wasted.

 

I’ve known a few people like that. Not many. But some.

They’re usually the ones who end up carrying everybody else.

 

But… I want to focus on a few moments from this tape. Three specific moments that I think… if you weren’t paying close attention… you might’ve let slide right past you.[PAUSE] 

 

The first one.

He rounds the corner toward the Museum of Freedom. He sees the smoke. Hears the gunfire. Sees the Raiders. Knows there’s a fight…

And he says…

 

“Not my fight.”[BEAT] 

 

Not. My. Fight.

 

Sit with those three words for just a second, honey. Because that’s not a villain talking. That’s not even a cold man talking. That’s a man who has been running on nothing but grief and adrenaline for three days… who has a mission… who has a son out there somewhere… making a completely rational assessment of a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with him.

 

Most people in this wasteland hear gunfire and they go the other direction, even if they see someone pinned down… and not because of cowardice. Just for survival.[BEAT] 

But Nate said “not my fight”… then…

Sees a man pinned down… and goes in anyway.

 

One man. Outnumbered. 

 

There’s something in him… something that apparently cannot be frozen out or grieved out of this man… that just… wouldn’t let him walk away.

That says everything about who Nate Campbell is Sugar. [PAUSE] 

 

The second moment… That laser musket mishap.

 

Now. You need to really understand what happened in that moment. Nate had never held a laser musket in his life. Maybe it’s your weapon of choice… one you’ve fired daily for years… but, he’d never even seen one before. They didn’t become a thing until a hundred years AFTER he was frozen solid. But, in the middle of an active firefight… he figured out how to operate it. Stayed calm. Cranked it. Headshot. Ash pile.[BEAT] 

 

Just. like. that… Just as simple as you please.

 

I’ve seen people fumble with weapons they’d carried for years under pressure. I’ve seen trained fighters freeze after nearly being shot. And this man… picked up something completely foreign to him… after taking a round to the left arm… and was immediately and lethally effective with it.

 

That’s not luck. Hell, that’s not even just training. That’s a particular kind of mind that most people don’t have and one that cannot be learnt. The kind that gets quieter when everything gets louder. A mind that slows down when the world speeds up…[BEAT] 

[CONFIDENT]I know that kind of mind.

 

[QUIETER] I know it… very well.[PAUSE] 

 

And then there was that last Raider. The one Dogmeat had on the ground. 

[SOFTER]The one Nate… just… watched.

He didn’t finish him clean. He just… waited. Let it play out… slowly.

 

After it was done he said — and I want you to hear this — he said…

“I’m not proud of that.”

 

[HEAVY]Five words. As serious as a grave. No explanation. No justification. Just…

I’m not proud of that.[BEAT]

 

Sugar… in this wasteland… we’ve all met people who would’ve laughed. People who would’ve described it in loving detail to any open ear in New Vegas. Who would’ve considered it an accomplishment.

 

And here’s this man… who let something ugly happen… and felt the weight of it immediately.[SIGH] 

 

He didn’t bury it. Didn’t excuse it. Just… said it plain.

 

[SINCERITY] The killer and the conscience… living right next to each other in the same chest. Breathing the same air.

 

That Sugar. Is a rare thing in deed.

 

I’ve spent a lot of years trying to make sure one of those two things didn’t swallow the other whole. It’s… not always easy. Some days it’s the hardest thing there is. But when you know how to… [HARD STOP]

[LIGHTER]WELL… hhmmppfh… I was a whisker away from singing like a jukebox in an empty Vault just then!

 

Speaking of bad decisions… bringing a pool cue to a gunfight.

Maybe it’s all that chem usin’… but them Raider folks sure do love to swing those things. Let me channel Nate for a sec here… “just step into it.”

He wasn’t wrong with that advice… usually you don’t blow someone’s brains out the back of their skull at the same time… but you do you, Nate. Just keep yer mouth closed.

The Minutemen.

I’ll be honest… I hadn’t thought about the Minutemen in a long time. Ran across a small company of ’em in my travels, years back. Scraggly bunch. Good intentions. I didn’t pay them much mind at the time…

Funny how things turn out.

How one person can change things without even knowing they’re doing it… you rarely get to know how your actions affect the world, do ya Sugar.

Now… before I sign off tonight… I want to mention something.

The courier network’s been picking up a little lately. Signals finding their way back to me from out there in the static. Gee Mail stumbled in here the other day… somehow upright… which is honestly more than I usually expect from him… with a dispatch tucked under his arm.

A soul out in the Texas Commonwealth sent word that the signal’s been finding them every week… said it helps them get through. Helps them survive a little easier out there.

It truly lifted an old warrior’s spirits…

If you’ve got something to say… a thought… a question… something this tape stirred up in you… you know where to find me. The courier network runs in all directions, my Little Devils. So keep the signal strong and your hat straight.

Nate Campbell said he hoped someone finds these recordings someday.

Well… someone did, Sugar.

They did.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive…

Stay strange.

Dusty. Out.

EP08: Deathclaw

Some tapes aren't meant to exist. This one does. What starts as an accidental recording drops you directly into the fight — no setup, no warning, just Nate Campbell, a Deathclaw, and a dog who refused to run. The second tape is quieter. Much quieter. Nate's back at Forward Base Alpha, battered, barely remembering how he got there, with broken ribs and a power armor suit that's done for now. He's alive. That's about all he's got.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back to the Signal, my Little Devils. Pull up a seat and pour ya some of the good stuff, because ole Nate done left us a gift today. Now, he didn’t mean to… have no doubt about that Sugar. But he didn’t erase it neither… and that told me he wanted it heard.

Now this is going to be handled a bit differently. Normally, I’d just let the tape roll how it is… but. 

This one.

This one needs a different approach. I’m gonna play you two holotapes today my wasteland wanderers! Yep!! Your gal Dusty has a double header for your listening pleasure today. 

The first one… He didn’t mean for it to even exist. It’s a recording of a fight. A fight… with a DEATHCLAW!

The second one, is his brief after action recording.

You see, Nate came face to face with death itself… fought it… and somehow, he started recording it. It’s intense. It’s short. And it’s a front row seat, so get yer ears ready. Tape seven is going live now.

NATE’S RECORDING (Tape 7): 

DAMMIT!! 

Uummppphhhh!!!

Taking Damage!

Die you moher fucker!

Oh shiiittt!!

Dogmeat… get back!!

Aaarrgggg! 

Minigun is FUCKING useless!

My Ribs.

Take this you mother fucker!

Power armor… took massive damage!

Shaun.

DUSTY’S MIDDLE: 

You ever tussle with a Deathclaw?

They don’t go down easy. That’s for sure. 

Sugar… there might not be a better name for what those things are. They ARE walking death. 

And power armor?

Well… let me just tell ya what the Brotherhood used to say…

Power armor might keep the claws out…

…but it won’t keep the blood in.

Let’s check back in on our boy Nate, shall we.

Holotape eight is now playing.

NATE’S RECORDING (Tape 8): 

October twenty-sixth, 2287. Log zero-zero-eight.

I’m… alive. Although, I slept like I wasn’t.

Power armor. It saved me… but it’s out of commission now.

I’m back at Forward Base Alpha. Not exactly sure how I got back here though. Can’t remember much from yesterday.

My head is pounding.

A Deathclaw. I didn’t think they were real. I was wrong. Not only are they real… they are still here. Two hundred and ten years later.

The Enclave. Humans can be the worst sometimes.

Ouch. My ribs. I’ll have to take it easy for a bit. I’ll have to wait for answers. I have to heal. I’m no good to Shaun like this.

Dogmeat! Dogmeat, you are one badass dog. You saved me, buddy. Thanks.

I need rest. I’ll try to record in a few days. Dogmeat and I are going back to sleep.

Nate Campbell… out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

He’s… alive.

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve listened to these two tapes more times than I probably should have. And every single time… that last part of tape seven gets me. Right in the middle of all of that chaos. All of that noise and panic and pain.

He screamed for Dogmeat to get back. Not get help. Not run. Get back. Like his first instinct — in the middle of fighting something that crawled out of a nightmare — was to make sure that dog didn’t get hurt.

I’ve known soldiers, sugar. Real ones. Hard ones. The kind that have seen enough of the world’s worst to stop flinching at most of it. And I’ll tell you something true right now. The measure of a person is not what they do when things are good. It’s what they reach for when everything is falling apart.

Nate Campbell was half conscious, taking catastrophic damage inside a suit of power armor, fighting something out of a nightmare.

And he reached for that dog.

And that dog? That dog didn’t run. Didn’t hide. Didn’t wait to see how things shook out before deciding whose side he was on. Dogmeat went right back in.

I don’t care what anybody says about animals not understanding loyalty. That dog understands something most people never figure out. You don’t leave your people. Not when it’s hard. Especially not when it’s hard.

Nate called him a badass. He’s not wrong.

He said something else on that tape… almost threw it away like it didn’t mean anything. But sugar, it does.

The Enclave.

I know that name. Anybody who’s been around long enough knows that name. They say war never changes… and that’s because of folks like the Enclave. I’ll be honest though, sugar — it surprised me to hear Nate say their name. Remember, he was alive before the bombs dropped. So that means the Enclave has been around for all that time. Behind the scenes. A shadow government.

Sugar, that realization hit me somewhere I forgot even existed. In my soul.

Now. Before I let you go tonight… the courier network is still humming out there in the dark. That old Hot Mail Girl’s even been making the rounds and I’ve got dispatches coming in.

Speaking of which — I’ve got a question for you, my little devils. If you’ve ever gone toe to toe with a Deathclaw… and lived to tell the tale… write in. Tell your story. I would genuinely love to hear that story.

And if you didn’t survive… well. I suppose we won’t be hearing from ya.

Get some rest tonight, honey. Nate’s going to need a few days. And he takes them. That’s important, sugar. He is a warrior. A killer. A hunter. But he knows he’s no good to Shaun if he ain’t healthy. He chooses to take care of himself.

Hear me on this, sugar. You can too.

If life has you down… if you’ve been beaten, been broken… know that you can take care of yourself. You can allow yourself to rest. To heal. Please do. You’re not alone out there.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP09: Buried

Nate goes back to the vault one last time — for a weapon, and for something he wasn't ready to face. What he carries out changes everything.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Halloween.

I’ve been sitting with that word all day.

I saw it written on a calendar once. In one of those houses that still had things in it — you know the kind. Frozen in time. With the table still set and pictures still on the wall. Like the family just stepped out for a minute and never came back.

The calendar was hanging in the kitchen. Some skeleton decorations hung on the wall next to it. That struck me. Why would anyone have smiling skeletons on their walls? I looked at the calendar and October thirty-first was circled in orange marker. A little hand-drawn pumpkin smiley face was next to it. The word Halloween written underneath in a child’s handwriting.

I tore the page out of that calendar. I kept it. Kept it for a long time. I tried to figure out what it meant. Halloween. Why was that so important to this family? I was just looking for some food. Maybe a place to sleep for the night. But I was pretty young, and could recognize a child’s writing.

Honestly, that’s what caught my attention. Some child took the time to write out the word Halloween and draw that smiling pumpkin. It was important to them. And here I was… dirty, injured, hungry, tired. Blood on my hands. A child.

It took me years to piece it all together. I learned to read books and I would always listen to the stories. The legends of prewar life. Most of those stories were just that. Stories. Legends. Myths. Halloween had to be no different. A holiday. A whole holiday. Built around pretending to be something you’re not and getting candy.

Children dressing up. Like monsters, or heroes, or Vault-Tec salesmen, apparently.

They would go out — children — at night, in the dark, alone. And walk up to strangers’ houses, knock on the door, and get candy?

In our world that sentence ends one way and it sure as hell has nothing to do with candy.

But that’s what they did. They knocked on strangers’ doors and those strangers — those complete strangers — would open the door, smile, and give them something sweet. And the children would say thank you and run back down the path to where their parents were waiting at the end of the driveway.

Waiting. Their parents were just waiting at the end of the driveway.

Not scanning the rooflines. Not hidden behind a retaining wall. Not with a weapon at their hip and one eye on the treeline.

Just standing there. Watching their children run up to lit porches in the dark.

I’ve tried to picture that. I’ve genuinely tried. Children on patrol gathering rations from strangers. That’s the only version my brain can make sense of. That’s the only frame I have for it.

But that’s not what this was.

This was just safe. The world was just safe enough for that.

I don’t know why that particular thought is the one that gets me. I’ve read about the old world. I know what it was. Clean water from a tap. Doctors in buildings with clean floors. Music on the radio that nobody was playing from a fortified position. I know all of that.

But something about children. In the dark.

Safe.

Something about a parent just standing at the end of a driveway. Without a weapon in their hand.

Whew. That’s enough of that particular rabbit hole. Sugar, some doors you crack open just enough to remember why you keep them closed in the first place.

The reason Halloween is on my mind today — the reason I’ve been sitting with that word — is because our boy Nate recorded this one on October thirty-first. For the slower ones in the back row… honey, that’s Halloween.

Now. I’m going to be straight with you before I press play. This tape asks something of you. It’s going to reach into your chest and take a hold of something in there and it is not going to let go easy.

And honey, if it doesn’t stir anything in ya… well, that makes ol’ Dusty as sad as a sober raider.

Some tapes you listen to. Some tapes you experience.

Tape nine starts now.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

Log zero-zero-nine. October thirty-first, 2287.

Halloween. It would have been, anyway.

Nora had costumes for all of us. Shaun was going to be a Vault-Tec salesman. Full trenchcoat. Little hat. A baby salesman. Can you even imagine?

Nora and I? We were supposed to wear vault suits. No joke.

Irony is a cruel mistress.

It’s been five days since I last recorded. Several of those days were spent in bed. Codsworth waited on me — brought things, tidied up, did his best. Stimpaks can heal the body. But they don’t touch the mind. He kept asking when Nora would be taking over and whether Shaun needed anything. After day two I told him to go home and wait for her there. So he’s back at Sanctuary Hills now.

Dogmeat stayed. Didn’t ask permission. Just stayed. Curled up by the bed and didn’t move.

I couldn’t will myself out of that bed. I’m not sure I really wanted to.

The bombs. Nora. Shaun. Vault-Tec using us as lab rats. The Deathclaw. Two hundred and ten years just gone. Slipped past while I was on ice, and for me it’s been what — eight days? Ten? My head needed time to get right with all of it.

And there was something else. Something I’d been putting off. Something I knew had to be done and was too afraid to face.

I went back to the vault. For the last time.

There’s a weapon locked in the Overseer’s office — I noted it on Day One. Told myself I’d go back for it. I keep my word. Even to myself. Dogmeat came with me. Didn’t make it a choice. Just fell into step beside me like he already knew I shouldn’t make that walk alone.

He’s a good dog.

God, I wish I’d looked harder for River. She ran off after we brought Codsworth home — sometime between unboxing him and everything else that week. I should have kept looking. I should have found her. I don’t know what happened to her. Can’t do anything about it now.

The walk to the vault is about twenty minutes from the base. I made it in fifteen. Muscle memory. Or just not wanting to slow down enough to think.

The platform was still raised. I hit the button and went down. Nobody had been inside. No tracks, no signs of entry. Same dead hillside. Same dead air rising up out of that hole.

I stood at the entrance for a minute. Just a minute. Don’t read into it.

I went in.

As the platform descended, my eyes were assaulted by the emergency fluorescents still running. That pale, flat light that doesn’t cast real shadows — makes everything look sickly and unnatural. I moved fast. Didn’t want to be there. Didn’t look at the cryo chamber.

I went straight to the Overseer’s office. Right to the locked case. I had tools this time and cracked it in under four minutes. Dogmeat just watched me. Judged me is probably a more accurate assessment. He sat with an expression that said he knew he would’ve done it faster. Crazy dog.

The weapon — the Cryolator — is a handheld cryo projection system. Barrel’s almost rifle length, which hopefully means range. According to the terminal, the Overseer and what was left of his science staff built it over months. Just to have something to do. Something to build. Something to feel useful.

Maybe that asshat should’ve spent more time actually being useful to the people in his care. But I suppose it worked out for me in the end.

It’s in remarkable condition. Maintained obsessively — you can tell. I still field-stripped it on the desk just to make sure. Checked the canister seal and trigger group, loaded it, test fired it.

Not gonna lie. It’s pretty awesome.

Dogmeat and I walked the same path out. Past the cafeteria. Past the recreation terminal. Past the cryo chamber entrance.

I stopped.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Long enough for Dogmeat to press himself against my leg.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know, buddy.”

I walked in. I hadn’t planned to. I just had to.

She looked the same. Exactly the same as she did when I watched that piece of shit pull the trigger. She tried to stop him. Tried to hold onto Shaun. She tried.

I was supposed to protect her and Shaun. That was my one job — the only one that ever mattered — and I was frozen in a tube six feet away while my wife was murdered in front of me.

I just stood there. I didn’t say anything. I’m not sure what I would have said anyway.

What do you say?

I’m sorry doesn’t begin to cover it. I love you isn’t enough. I’m going to find him — that just sounds like something a desperate man says out of emotion. No depth. No weight behind it. Not yet.

I took her hand. It was cold. I held it anyway.

“I’m taking you home, Nora.”

That’s all I said. Then I picked her up and carried her out. Dogmeat walked beside us the whole way. She wasn’t heavy. She never was. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

I closed the vault door behind us. I’m never going back.

I buried her that afternoon. There’s a tree in the cul-de-sac behind our old house. A big dead hardwood — ugly, bare, looks like it hasn’t had leaves in two hundred years. But Nora loved that tree. When we first moved in, she used to sit under it in the evenings when the weather was good. Said it felt old. Solid. Like it had been there longer than any of the houses and would outlast all of them.

She called it her tree of Sanctuary.

That just seemed to fit. So I buried her under it.

It was the right thing to do.

I dug the grave myself. Took most of the day. The soil out here is hard — radiation and time does that. My ribs screamed from the first shovel to the last. I didn’t stop though. I couldn’t stop.

I deserved that pain. To feel it. Every second of it. I failed her. I lied to her. She deserved so much more than what I gave her — more than what I was.

I wrapped her in the cleanest thing I could find. One of the empty houses had a suitcase with a blanket in it. I wrapped her in that blanket. I know that’s not what she deserved. But she used to say the best you have is enough — if you give it completely.

I gave it completely.

Dogmeat sat at the edge of the grave the entire time I worked. He didn’t wander. Didn’t sleep. Just sat there. Watching.

When it was done, I marked the grave. I’d found a piece of rebar and an old concrete block and scratched her name into the concrete with the tip of my combat knife.

NORA CAMPBELL.

That’s all. Just her name.

Some people want dates on a grave marker. Something poetic. But she deserves more than just a marker. She deserves a legacy. And that’s exactly what these recordings are going to give her.

I knelt there for a while. A long while.

Then I took off my wedding ring.

I’d been thinking about it for days. Whether to keep wearing it. Whether to bury it with her. Whether any of it mattered at all.

It matters.

I’m not taking it off because I’m done loving her. I’m taking it off because a killer and a grieving husband can’t coexist. The man who wears that ring went to fundraising events. He read speeches and pretended he was just a guy from the VFW. That man couldn’t protect his family.

The man who finds Shaun doesn’t get to wear a wedding ring. Not yet. Not until the job is done.

I put it with hers and secured them with my dog tags. I made sure I taped them so they wouldn’t make any sound.

I’ll wear it again when I bring him home. When I avenge her murder. That is a promise.

The last words I spoke to her before I covered her with dirt — “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

I made a circle of flat stones around her and the tree. I needed to make sure nothing gets built over her. I want anyone who ever works this settlement to know. This ground is protected. It’s sacred.

Preston saw me doing it. He didn’t ask. Good man.

I’m going to compress the rest of the week into this entry. I just don’t have the bandwidth to break it down day by day. Not for this one.

My ribs are healing. The power armor absorbed most of the Deathclaw’s punishment but my left side still lights up when I breathe wrong — which seems to be with every breath. I’ve been taping it tight and taking it easy.

Eli Turner would be proud. He was our team’s combat medic — though that title doesn’t really do him justice. With the level of training that man had, he was basically a walking hospital.

Preston and his group have been working on Sanctuary Hills. I’ve helped when my ribs would allow it. Preston’s not a builder — and I say that with respect, because he knows it too. But he is relentless. Just keeps moving. Keeps organizing. Keeps asking me questions about defensive positions and sight lines. He genuinely cares about this world and wants to make it better. Nora would’ve liked him. He’s growing on me. Like a fungus.

Sturges though — he’s the real deal. That man can fix anything. He’s already got a generator running and has plans drawn up for a water purifier. In this world, clean water isn’t just comfort. It’s survival infrastructure. It’s the difference between a settlement and a liability. And it’s exactly what this settlement needs to grow.

Mama Murphy asked me to build her a chair. I got the impression she just needed to talk. So I built her a chair. She stood watching me work, talking the whole time. I asked about the chem use. About the Sight. She said she couldn’t remember starting on them. Said she’d had the Sight since she was a child but she could only access it when she was high.

I kept working. Filed it somewhere I’ll deal with later.

She kept telling stories. The stories got more grandiose as the day went long. Said she’d ripped the head off a raider with her bare hands. I just nodded. Said she’d killed a Deathclaw with a single bullet. I put down the hammer. Looked at her for a long minute. Then picked the hammer back up.

The thing is — she believes every word of it. What’s also clear is that the chems have been working on her mind for a very long time. Whatever grip on reality she has left is held together with stubbornness and good intentions.

I talked to her about getting clean. Not a lecture. Just a conversation. She agreed. Her choice, not mine. Said the Sight would go away without the chems. I told her that was okay. I meant it.

I can’t be the reason an old woman keeps poisoning herself. Even if her visions have been right. Even if they help me find Shaun. That’s not a trade I’m willing to make. Besides — she already told me what I needed to know.

Diamond City. Shaun is alive.

I don’t need another vision. I just need to move.

I built her a great chair. She’s going to need to be comfortable for what’s coming at her next.

Diamond City is southeast. I’m leaving in the morning.

For the first time since I came out of that vault — I feel like I can rest. Not because things are good. They’re not. Not because the grief is gone. It isn’t. But because I know what the next step is. And I know I’m ready to take it.

Inventory rundown before I head out.

Cryolator — secondary long arm. No idea what it will do in a live firefight. Loaded and field-tested. Ten millimeter pistol — primary sidearm. Plenty of ammo. Plenty of experience behind those sights. Pipe rifle — primary long range weapon for now. Modified with a salvaged scope. Decent range. Single magazine. I’ll have to be strategic with it. Shotgun — short barrel, close quarters. Two shells. I’ll find more on the road or use it as a club. A sawed-off shotgun makes a surprisingly effective melee weapon. Last remaining fusion core. Too valuable to leave behind even with the power armor down and still under repair.

Medical — four stimpaks, two Rad-X, one RadAway. Tight. But workable if I’m careful. Food and water — three days. I can scavenge if I need to.

Companions. Dogmeat. I told him to stay. I swear he threw what I can only describe as a full-on tantrum. But I’m making this trip alone. There are things I’ll have to do to get the answers I need — things I don’t want him to see. He’ll be here when I get back.

Then there’s Codsworth. I didn’t ask him. He’s better suited here now that he has people to serve.

Before I leave in the morning I’m stopping by her grave. Not to say goodbye. Just to let her know where I’m going. What I’m doing. She always liked knowing where I was headed — even when I couldn’t tell her the truth about it. All those times I had to look her in the eyes and lie.

This time I can be honest.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO: 

Hhmmmm.

Yeah…

I’m just gonna sit here for a second if that’s alright with you.

Sometimes life just requires you to do that, sugar. Sometimes you just need a minute before the world starts back up again.

Alright.

Let’s talk about what just happened.

A lot of people would have you believe that grief is something you move through. Like a tunnel. You go in one end and eventually — if you’re lucky, if you’re strong enough, if you do the right things in the right order — you come out the other side.

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s how grief works.

I think grief is something you have to carry. And the question isn’t whether you carry it. The question is whether you let it carry you.

Nate Campbell dug a grave today with broken ribs. Through hard soil, with every reason in the world to just stop. To put down the shovel and sit in the dirt and not get back up. Hell, most people would have left Nora at the cryopod. Left her in the vault. Nate had that choice. He also had the choice to just stop.

But that’s not Nate.

He didn’t stop.

And here’s what I want you to understand about what happened at that tree. Because I think it’s easy to hear the burial and miss what was really being buried. Because it wasn’t just his wife.

He took off his wedding ring.

Now. Before you misunderstand that — hear me out, sugar.

He didn’t take it off because he stopped loving her. He didn’t take it off because he’s done. He took it off because he looked at himself clearly — maybe for the first time since he walked out of that vault — and he made a distinction. A decision.

“The man who wore that ring went to fundraising events. Read speeches. Pretended he was just a guy from the VFW. That man couldn’t protect his family.” He said those words himself.

And that man is buried under that tree. Buried right next to his wife.

What walked away from that grave is something different. Someone different. Someone who knows exactly who they are and exactly what they have to do. He didn’t lose himself at that tree, honey. He found himself.

Most people carry their failures like extra weight until it bends them, until it breaks them. Nate gave his a home. Marked it with stones and walked away lighter for it.

Not because the grief is gone. Not that at all. It’s just that he gave it a place to live. A place that wasn’t inside his chest. It’s important that you catch that, sugar.

He also said something on that tape that I haven’t been able to shake since the first time I heard it.

“She deserves a legacy. And that’s exactly what these recordings are going to give her.”

I’ve been sitting with those words for a good while now. Sitting with the importance of them. The weight of them.

He started these recordings as mission reports. Private notes, his ears only. Just a soldier keeping track of an operation in a world he didn’t recognize anymore. That’s what they were on Day One. Just a way for him to stay sane.

But somewhere between a werewolf story, standing at Shaun’s crib, and carrying Nora out of that vault…

They became something else. They became for her.

Now. I found a busted old Pip-Boy in the wasteland. His busted old Pip-Boy. I’ve been broadcasting these tapes because I believed his story deserved to be heard.

But maybe that’s not the whole truth of it.

He made these recordings for Nora. He hoped someone would find them. That someone would know their story.

And I’m giving that to the world.

Together — a grieving soldier and a woman who loves to talk — are building exactly what he promised at that grave.

A legacy.

Now. I want to — no. I need to talk about Mama Murphy for a moment.

Because I’ve heard that story before.

When I was running with the Brotherhood — back when I was young enough to think structure meant safety — they had files on people. Individuals of interest. People who seemed to have powers. Skills that others didn’t. There was a file on a woman. A warrior. Fierce. Ruthless by all accounts, who had a gift that nobody could make sense of. A sight that went beyond what chems should be able to produce. The Brotherhood wanted to know if someone had found pre-war enhancement technology. If there was something mechanical behind it that they could acquire and use.

The report noted — and I remember this specifically because it struck me as the kind of detail that belongs in a wasteland legend and nowhere else — that she had allegedly killed a Deathclaw. With a single bullet.

They never found her. It was a fun story. One of many the Brotherhood has stored away. The wasteland’s full of stories like that. People become legends out here because legends are easier to believe in than people are.

And here’s Nate Campbell. Building a chair for an old woman who told him exactly that story.

Hmmphhh.

Well. I’m left to wonder. Is she that woman? Is she that legend… or is she just some crazy old junkie who heard those same stories and made them her own?

Now. I want to talk about something before I let you go tonight.

Here’s a man who buried his wife, carried her out of that vault, dug her grave in hard soil — all with broken ribs. Who wrapped her in a stranger’s blanket because it was the best he had to give. A man who sat with an old woman and listened to her stories and talked her into getting clean without making it about himself. Who made an inventory list, packed his gear, and made a decision to leave in the morning.

Not because things are good. Because the next step exists and he knows what it is.

The sun comes up whether we’re ready for it or not. And he decided to be ready for it.

So ask yourself something. Right now.

What made you keep going?

Not the details. Not the blood and the loss and the specifics. I’m not asking for all of that. Just the one thing. The moment. The person. The reason. Whatever it was that made you decide to still be here. And when you have that — when you know what that is — write in and tell me.

Because those stories belong on the air, sugar. They deserve to be heard, to be shared. They deserve to be broadcast so every soul out there tuning into this signal tonight — every single person who thinks they might be the only one hurting, who thinks they can’t keep moving forward — can hear your story. So they’ll know they’re not alone. That they can keep moving. Keep living.

So write in, my little devils. Tell me what made you keep going. I’ll read every one. Maybe your story will be the one that keeps someone else going. Hand it over to the courier network and send it my way.

You matter, sugar.

Before he leaves in the morning, Nate’s stopping by her grave. Not to say goodbye. Just to let her know where he’s going.

That’s the kind of man he is. And I have a feeling things are about to change for ol’ Nate.

Hmmphhh.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP10: Promises

Nate starts to build a theater of operations. He's building a future for his son... for, his family. He makes the choice to do more than just avenge his wife, and rescue his son... and it all starts today, with promises kept.

CREATIVE NOTES: Creative license was used in this episode. I am aware that the Raiders are in the Corvega plant in the Fallout 4 game, I changed their location for story and character development... I am also aware that there is no barn at Tenpines Bluff, and they are only growing Tato plants there... Again, creative license for the story I was telling, I apologize to all hardcore lore fans out there.
- Garrick Cline

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils. 

I’m glad to have ya…

We’ve hit double digits with this little show… and that’s a bit of a milestone, don’t you think? 

As it turns out, our boy Nate has also hit double digits. Cept, he ain’t one to look at that as a milestone… he’s been through quite a lot getting acquainted with the wasteland. But, ‘ole Nate ain’t one to yap about it much.

You ever notice how the quietest people… carry the loudest stories? The ones who don’t perform their pain for a crowd… don’t wear it on their sleeve like a badge… don’t need you to know how bad it was… They just… keep moving. 

Keep building. Keep putting one boot in front of the other like the alternative never even occurred to them.

I’ve met a few people like that in my travels.. I’d imagine you have as well. 

They tend to be the most dangerous people in any room… and somehow… the most trustworthy ones too. Funny how that works.

Tonight’s tape… it’s a man finding his footing.

He’s becoming…. We’ll, he’s become something different. Different than he was. Someone Different. 

Something new. Something the Commonwealth has rarely seen…

But, I’ll let him explain it.

He’s better at it than I am anyway…

Tape ten is now live.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

Log zero-one-zero. November first, 2287.

No new intel on Shaun.

I was heading out for Diamond City — Mama Murphy’s vision, the answers I need — when Preston Garvey stopped me. Said he needed to talk. Said too many people out in the wasteland are hurting. Being taken advantage of. Said the Minutemen needed help — but after Quincy, there’s only five of them left. None of them fighters. Not really.

I told him I didn’t have time. Told him it wasn’t my fight.

He just stood there. Staring at me. Said if we don’t do something — no one will.

He had a point.

And then — I don’t know how to explain this exactly — I could feel Nora. Not hear her. Feel her. The way you feel someone standing behind you in a dark room. She would have already been halfway out the door to help. Wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

So. I told him I’d do what I could.

He immediately told me about a settlement that needed help now. Of course he did.

Which is how I ended up at a place called Tenpines Bluff.

Small farming operation. Two settlers trying to grow corn and mutfruit on a patch of irradiated hillside northeast of Sanctuary. The optimism required to attempt that — the sheer tenacity of it — I genuinely respect it. They’re good people in a bad situation.

I’m recording this from inside their barn. They offered me a bed. It’s not a bed. It’s a cot with something on it that used to be a blanket. I’ve slept on worse. Considerably worse. Not complaining. Just making an observation.

Left Sanctuary at oh-five-hundred. Pre-dawn. Stopped at the tree on the way out. Promises.

The road between Sanctuary and Tenpines isn’t bad if you know what you’re doing. Mostly open terrain. A few rocky elevation changes, but good sight lines in most directions. I moved tactically anyway — kept my profile low, varied my speed. Everything out here is hostile until proven otherwise. That’s the working assumption now.

Arrived after a few hours. Settlers were already up and working the gardens.

I approached from the road. Announced myself — Minutemen, here to help. They barely looked up. No relief. No recognition. Just nothing. Eyes completely empty. I’ve seen that look before. It’s what’s left when people have been shown nothing but pain and betrayal for long enough that hope stops feeling like a thing that belongs to them.

They didn’t trust me. But they told me about the raiders anyway.

Small group. Shows up every few days. Takes their food, smashes what they can’t carry, grabs anything scavenged — then leaves. Then comes back. Over and over. Just enough damage to keep them scared. Not enough to finish them off. These people live in constant fear of a schedule they can’t predict and can’t stop.

The more they talked, the angrier I got.

Why are people such assholes? Why is domination always the instinct — why not just help?

I told them I’d take care of it. They both laughed. Just laughed. And walked away.

That almost broke my heart. No hope left. Just going through the motions. Existing. Nothing more than that.

I moved out. Needed intel.

Found the camp without much trouble — these raiders may as well have painted a sign and put an arrow on it. Roaring fire in the middle of the day. Smoke you could see from a mile out. Dumbasses.

I kept my distance. Kept the sun in front of me. Moved frequently. Watched.

Staying tactical was almost unnecessary for this one. These guys were about as undisciplined as a daycare. No posted guards. No rotation. No real order. Their leader — and I’m using that word loosely — stayed in a hide by himself. Only came out to yell at someone, demand more alcohol, or relieve himself.

This will be an easy mission.

Pulled back. Found a good hide in the rocks above the camp. Ate half a ration. Drank some water. Let my ribs settle. Watched their daily routine play out.

Lots of yelling. Lots of arguing about nothing. The most exciting moment of the day was when one of them threw a bottle at another over what appeared to be a card game.

It was a long wait.

I could have walked down the path and taken the entire camp with very little difficulty. But that wasn’t the point. Take out the leader — the rest get the message. Clean. Efficient. Minimum exposure.

Moved out at dusk. Their fire was going strong by then. Good for them. Bad for their night vision.

I came in from the north. Downwind. Used the tree line until it ran out — then just moved in slow.

Slow is fast.

That’s something I used to tell younger operators. Every instinct you have says rush. Close the distance. Get it done. Get it over with. But slow and deliberate beats fast and sloppy. Every single time. The target doesn’t get less dead because you took an extra sixty seconds.

The watch was asleep by the time I reached the perimeter. Not asleep. Passed out. Head on his chest. Pipe rifle across his knees. Snoring. I stepped over his legs.

Their leader was alone in his hide. I came in crouching low. My weight centered. Combat knife in my right hand — took it off a raider a few days back. He was on his bed, asleep, on his back. Perfect.

He was middle-aged. Heavyset with a face a blind mother couldn’t love. Someone had drawn a skull on the back of his jacket in what I think was red paint. Super scary stuff.

I almost woke him up just to tell him what a tool he was. But I had work to do. I crouched at the head of his bed. Left hand over his nose and mouth from behind. Right hand did its bloody job.

I was in and out. Nobody knew I was there until morning. And by that time I was already back at Tenpines eating corn porridge — listening to the settlers tell me they’d been praying for help for three weeks.

That hit me. Right in the gut.

Not the op. The op was nothing. I’ve hit hardened targets in mainland China with a four-man team and a twelve-minute extraction window. Six sleeping raiders and a man who thought a hand-painted skull made him dangerous. That’s not an operation. That’s just a Tuesday.

But the settlers kept thanking me. The woman grabbed my hand with both of hers and just held it. Didn’t say anything. Just held it. I didn’t know what to do with that.

I told them about the Minutemen. Preston’s network — such as it is. Explained that connecting means they’re not alone out here. They get help when they need it. In return, when someone else needs help, they contribute what they can. They agreed without hesitation. Which tells you everything about how bad things have gotten. Two people farming a hillside — grateful to join an organization with a current roster of what. Six people and a laser musket. I guess some hope is better than no hope.

I did a perimeter assessment before I turned in. Their position isn’t bad. Elevation on the north side gives decent sight lines. These aren’t people who need saving. They need resources and a network. There’s a difference.

Something has been working itself out in my head while I’ve had time to think. I want to get it on tape.

Shaun is alive. Mama Murphy told me, and I believe her. That’s the most important piece of intel I have. And it means I don’t need to sprint.

Sprinting through unknown terrain — no allies, no supply lines, no network, no intel — gets you killed. And a dead man doesn’t bring his son home.

Every settlement I stabilize is a potential safe house. Every person I help is a potential source of information. Every favor builds a reputation — and reputation is a form of currency out here. It has value. I’m not doing charity work. I’m running a theater of operations. Right now I’ll build the infrastructure while I push to the objective. Finding Shaun.

And Nora would have wanted this. She always fought for the underdog. She wouldn’t want Shaun raised in a Commonwealth worse than the one I woke up in. So I’ll help where I can. It’s tactical. And she would have wanted it. Both things can be true.

There’s something else I’ve been putting off. Avoiding.

The Deathclaw.

I haven’t talked about it. After it happened I was in survival mode — hurting, running on adrenaline and denial. “A frickin Deathclaw” was about the depth of my analysis at the time. I need to be honest about what happened. Not for the record. For myself.

When I came out of that vault I was confident. Too confident. I’d handled every threat that came at me — no remorse, no hesitation. Military training. Adrenaline. A rage that hadn’t found its ceiling yet. I thought I understood the hierarchy out here. Raiders at the top. Dangerous, sure. But manageable. Predictable. Human.

I was wrong.

That Deathclaw came around the corner of that building and my brain did something it has almost never done in my life. It went blank.

Not the tactical blank — not the clean, focused absence of thought you train for, where instinct takes over and your body just moves. I know that blank. I’ve lived in that blank. This was the other kind. The kind where something in you looks at what’s coming and just steps back. Goes quiet.

I’ve been under fire on three continents. I’ve been in rooms with people who wanted me dead and had the means to do it. Situations where I genuinely did not know if I was walking out. I handled them. Not always cleanly. Not always without cost. But I handled them.

That Deathclaw scared me.

Actually scared me. The way you’re scared of something that exists on a completely different level than you do. It’s twelve feet tall. Moves faster than anything that size has any right to move. I watched it rip a raider apart — just standing there in the street — as easily as tearing paper. Then it turned. And it charged.

The power armor absorbed most of it. Which mostly meant I got thrown around inside a metal can instead of dying immediately. My ribs would like me to note that “most of it” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Power armor is fitted to the soldier wearing it. Apparently the man this set was built for was enormous.

Dogmeat saved my life. A dog. I’m a decorated combat veteran — seventy-five black ops missions across eight years of covert service — and a German Shepherd pulled my ass out of the fire. I’ve made peace with this. Took a couple of days. But I’ve made peace with it. I’m fairly certain he’s smug about it. Can’t prove it. But I’m fairly certain.

Here’s what I took from it.

I don’t know this world yet. I know how to move through it. I know how to fight in it. I can read people and terrain and threat levels. But the Commonwealth has its own hierarchy — and I’ve seen maybe the bottom third of it. Raiders aren’t the worst thing out here. Which means I stay humble. Stay curious. Keep learning.

The rage is still there. It’s not going anywhere. But rage that makes you stupid is just a death wish with running shoes. I’ve seen what happens to operators who stop respecting the threat. I’m not going to be that guy.

After action inventory.

Sixty caps off the leader. Apparently these are currency now — settlers confirmed it. Didn’t loot the rest of the camp. Too much noise, too much time. Principal target only. Found a hunting rifle scope on him — going on the pipe rifle, better than what I had. Rounds expended — zero. Picked up a handful of shotgun shells and some ten millimeter from his kit. Stimpaks still at four. Ribs are healing — didn’t need them. Passed on the chems. I’m already feeling like a dealer with what I’m carrying.

The settlers fed me. Corn porridge and something that was meant to be a pie. It wasn’t. I ate two portions anyway.

The sky tonight is just a sea of stars. Nora would have loved this sky.

Diamond City tomorrow. Moving out at first light.

The settlers are asleep. The farm is quiet. My ribs hurt less than they did this morning. I’m calling that a win.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO:

Well… now, that’s more like it, sugar.

Preston Garvey stopped him at the gate. Asked for help. And Nate’s first instinct was no. Not my fight. I’ve got somewhere to be. I’ve got a son to find and a killer to hunt and I don’t have time for…

And then… he felt her.

Not heard. Felt. The way you know without turning around that someone you love is there with you.

And just like that, he agreed to help. Because she is still with him.

So he heads out to Tenpines. To help. But I don’t think Nate was ready for what he saw there. Just two people farming on irradiated soil. Getting robbed on a schedule they couldn’t predict and couldn’t stop. Living in the space between the last time it happened and the next time it would.

When Nate told them he was there to help, they laughed.

Because every hand that’s been offered to them before had something attached to it. That laugh only comes out when what’s left in a person is just barely hanging on.

Nate went and took care of their raider problem anyway. Rounds expended — zero. In case you missed that part.

Now. He admitted something on this tape that I want you to understand the weight of. He’s handled everything this wasteland has thrown at him without blinking. But — and this is the important part — that Deathclaw scared him.

Not shook him. Not surprised him. Scared him. And he said so. Out loud. Into a recorder. Put it on tape and let it stand.

You have no idea how rare that is.

I’ve known warriors, sugar. Real ones. The kind that have been through enough of the world’s worst that most people couldn’t look them in the eye without looking away. And the only ones that scared me — the truly dangerous ones — were never the ones who claimed they weren’t afraid of anything.

Because a warrior who knows their weakness can train against it. Can build around it until it stops being a weakness and starts being a strength.

Nate Campbell filed that Deathclaw fight away as a lesson. Adjusted his threat assessment. Updated his internal doctrine. Completed a mission. And then ate breakfast.

Now here’s what I want you to catch. Because it connects to something that happened one tape ago.

He buried the grieving husband. The failed father. Under that tree with Nora.

What walked away from that grave is the soldier. Focused. Clear-eyed. Running a theater of operations while looking for his son.

It’s important that you catch this, honey.

Ten tapes ago, he walked out of Vault 111 in a blue vault suit. Alone. No knowledge of the world he’d woken up in. No network. No supply line. Nothing but rage and grief so big it should have stopped him cold.

Ten tapes. That’s ten days later.

He has settlements. He has allies. He has a dog that would die for him and has already tried to prove it. He has a network that’s growing and a thirst for revenge that’s driving him forward.

Now. I don’t know the man who shot Nora. But I know this, sugar. Whatever he thought he left alive in that cryopod… was wrong.

What’s hunting him isn’t a grieving father. The man he left in that pod is gone. A killer, a predator is now hunting him. And somehow I’ll bet he knew that. Felt it. But in my experience, guys like that are too full of themselves to be scared.

I would imagine he’ll live long enough to regret that.

Nate called today a win. And you know what — he’s right. That is a win. Because progress happened today. Real progress. Measurable progress. Two people on a hillside went to sleep tonight a little less afraid than they were yesterday morning. That’s not nothing. That’s everything.

Find your version of that tonight, sugar. Whatever small thing moved you forward today — however slight — find it. Name it. Hold onto it.

That’s not delusion. That’s discipline.

The courier network’s been busy lately. Letters coming in from out there in the static. One from New California came in last week from a fella named Jake who said he was tuning in. Said the signal helps get him through his days out there. Said he can relate to Nate because he was also a soldier. Well, Jake — thank you for serving, and for listening.

I’ll have more to share soon. Keep them coming in, my little devils. Your stories matter more than you know.

Diamond City tomorrow. Nate’s moving out at first light. As it turns out, I may have to as well… but I’ll be on the air just as I were today. No worries, sugar.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP11: Civilized

Ten days out of the vault. Two brothers dead over a word nobody can prove.
A missing detective who holds the fastest path to Shaun.
Diamond City has answers. Vault 114 has something else entirely.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils.

Pull up close tonight. Because today’s tape takes our boy somewhere new.

Diamond City.

Now. I’ve been to Diamond City more times than I’d care to count. Never stayed long. Never do, sugar. Settlements, especially the big ones, have a way of asking questions I’m just not gonna answer. They’ve got a way of finding folks that don’t want finding.

Nothing personal against the city itself. The lights are on. The market runs. Takahashi makes a decent bowl of noodles and Polly can give ya the best cut of meat you could ask for. Just don’t ask her where it came from and you’ll be fine.

But there’s a particular kind of attention that comes with being inside walls that high and with that many people. That kind of attention has never been a friend of ol’ Dusty. So I pass through. Get what I need. Move on.

But our boy Nate? He’s about to walk through those gates for the very first time.

Now, I want you to try and imagine what that must feel like. Ten days out of a vault. The wasteland’s been his whole world since he thawed out. Raider camps. A Red Rocket station. Sanctuary Hills in ruins. Broken roads, dead trees, tiny farms and nothing resembling what he remembers civilization looking like.

And then — the baseball stadium. Now a city.

How do you think ol’ Natey-boy took to that?

Well, sugar. That’s what the tape’s for.

Now. Before I press play — Diamond City is a lot of things. It’s loud and political and suspicious of its own shadow. It’s got a Mayor who I wouldn’t trust to watch my pack while I tied my boot. And it’s got a fear running through it that… well, I know something about. That we all know something about.

The Institute. Synths. The idea that the person standing next to you might not be a person. At all.

That fear is real. It runs deep. And it does things to people that civilization is supposed to prevent.

Tape eleven is now rolling.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

Log zero, one, one.

November second. Twenty-two eighty-seven.

I’m in a room. Underground. Place called the Dugout Inn — Diamond City’s answer to hospitality.

It’s a converted basement with a bed and a lock on the door. Not much to look at. But in this world a lock on a door isn’t a small thing.

I’m going to clean my weapons while I talk. Old habit. Some people pray before bed. Some people read.

I maintain my gear. A clean weapon is not a luxury out here. It’s non-negotiable.

You don’t want one of those speed-racing brain munchers closing the gap on you, only to hear a click. Because you couldn’t be bothered to clean your weapon.

But hey. Zombies gotta eat too.

It’s been a full day. I’ll run it from the top.

Left Tenpines at oh-seven-hundred. The settlers were already up — I said my goodbyes, gave them some basic defensive positioning notes I’d written out the night before, and moved south along the railroad tracks. Railroad infrastructure is useful out here. Elevated sight lines in sections, predictable terrain, and it points somewhere. Most roads out here point nowhere useful anymore.

I kept a tactical sustained pace. Not rushing. Not casual either. Treating the ground between Tenpines and Diamond City the way you’d treat any unmapped combat zone — eyes up, variable pace, never the same pattern twice.

The Commonwealth rewards paranoia. I’ve decided to lean into that.

About forty-five minutes out, I came up on a place called Bedford Station. Old rail depot. Overgrown. A few boxcars on a dead siding.

Something felt wrong about it immediately. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that isn’t peaceful — it’s held.

I took the high ground on the ridge to the east and glassed the area. Old sniper term — means I used my scope to scan methodically. Sergeant Hayes called it reading the land before you walk on it.

There were bodies in the boxcars. Or what I thought were bodies. They weren’t moving. Just slumped. Pale. Their skin looked like something left in the sun too long and then left in the dark even longer. Preston had described Ghouls to me back at Sanctuary. The difference between the ones that still think and the ones that don’t. These ones I couldn’t tell. They weren’t moving. Could’ve been dead. Could’ve been sleeping. Could’ve been waiting.

Here’s where I’ll be honest about a decision I made that was not my best work.

I decided to fire a test round into the ground near the boxcars. The logic being — if they’re dead, nothing happens. If they’re feral, they react to the sound but I’m at distance and elevated and they won’t know where it came from. Confusion can be an effective combat tactic. Clean intel at minimal risk.

That was the logic.

I was wrong.

The round hit the dirt and every single one of them came up at once. Not slowly. Not confused. Fast. Immediately and completely fast. Like something threw a switch. One second they were slumped in those boxcars and the next second they were — Preston used the word Lurch. That’s accurate. It’s not quite a run. It’s faster than a run. It’s what a run looks like when the thing doing it has no concept of self-preservation and nothing to lose. There were seven of them.

I dropped one with a headshot at distance — clean, center mass on the skull, confirmed drop. Then they hit the tree line and I lost the angle. Ditched the rifle. Drew the ten millimeter. And then it was close. Very close.

I’m not going to dress it up. I moved and shot and moved and shot and it took more rounds than it should have and there was a moment where one of them got inside my reach and I went to the knife and it wasn’t clean.

Seven down. All of them. That took far longer than it should have. They are quick.

Notes for the record — feral ghouls do not respond to suppression fire the way a human combatant does. No self-preservation instinct. No tactical retreat. No reassessment of threat. You shoot one round anywhere near them and the rest do not reconsider. They close. Traditional sniper doctrine assumes your target has a survival instinct. These things don’t. Different rules entirely.

Also noted — they carry practically nothing. Searched all seven. Came up with some loose caps, a pencil, and a toothbrush. Low value engagement. High ammo drain. Moving forward — avoid if possible. The ten millimeter works but it takes too many rounds to confirm a drop. I understand now why the Minutemen lost so many people at Quincy. These are not targets that respond to warning shots and tactical positioning. If Preston’s people weren’t trained for that specific biology it wasn’t a fair fight. It was never going to be a fair fight.

Now. I’m going to say something and I want it on record that I am a rational, trained, combat-experienced operator who has functioned effectively in some of the most hostile environments this country ever produced. I say that as context for what I’m about to admit.

One of them bit me. Left forearm. Through the jacket. It’s not deep. It’s barely anything. It’s a bite. I cleaned it with RadAway, wrapped it, it’s fine. Medically — it’s fine.

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. Lot of them. There was a genre. You know the one. Person gets bitten. Person starts feeling a little off. Person makes increasingly poor decisions. Person stops being a person.

I’m just saying I’m aware of the genre. I’m aware it exists. I’m also aware that I’m a rational adult who understands the difference between fiction and — I checked my arm four times between Bedford Station and Diamond City. Four times.

My arm is fine. I am fine.

I’m fine.

Moving on.

Diamond City.

I came up on it from the north around noon. You can see it from distance — the old baseball stadium. Nora and I always talked about going to a game. Now it’s a settlement.

First functioning settlement of real size I’ve seen since I woke up. It looked almost normal. From a distance. If you ignored the minigun turrets, armed guards, and general destruction.

There was a situation at the gate as I walked up.

A woman. Journalist. Red coat. She was in an argument with the gate guard — a man named Danny, who appeared to be operating at roughly half the cognitive capacity required for his position. She wanted in. He wasn’t letting her in. She was making a case. He was making excuses. She was winning the argument on points and losing it on authority. I know that position well.

Her name is Piper Wright. She publishes a paper — Publick Occurrences. She’d been locked out by the Mayor for publishing something he didn’t like. She clocked me as a new face immediately and pivoted. Used my arrival as leverage to get herself back through the gate.

Smart. Opportunistic. Slightly irritating. Civilian obstacle converted to access asset. Tactical opportunity.

She talks fast. Thinks faster. Doesn’t back down from a confrontation even when the confrontation is clearly not going her way. Reminded me of —

Uumm.

Tactically useful. That’s — she’s tactically useful. Quick mind, local knowledge, established presence in the settlement. Potential intelligence asset if needed. I’ll keep a distance. I don’t need complications. She’s useful until she’s not.

We made it in. She convinced the mayor I was a caravan trader with supplies. He apologized for her and shook my hand. I immediately disliked him.

Everything about that man is surface. Slick suit. Practiced handshake. The kind of smile that arrives before the thought does. I’ve been around men like him my whole career — the ones who send soldiers into harm’s way and call it sacrifice while making sure their own family never has to make one. I flagged him as untrustworthy and potentially useful in that order.

 

As I walked down the steps I saw Publick Occurrences on my left. Just beyond that was the city square — a market. I had supplies to sell and I needed ammo, food, and weapon upgrades. 

A young girl stopped me to buy a paper. Piper’s younger sister. Her name’s Nat and she is just as feisty as her big sister. I bought a paper. The big story was about how the Mayor was a Synth infiltrator. I tucked the paper under my arm and walked into the market.

Shortly after entry there was a situation. 

Two men. Brothers — I found that out after. Kyle and Riley. Kyle had a weapon drawn on Riley. Accusing him of being a Synth. The crowd had formed that particular shape that crowds form when they want to watch something happen and also want to be able to say later that they didn’t. Security was present. Doing nothing useful. 

I moved toward it. Not a tactical decision — a reflex. Two men, one weapon, a crowd doing nothing. My feet moved before my brain filed the paperwork. I got close enough to talk. I tried to — I said something. I don’t remember exactly what. Something about standing down. Something about nobody needing to — The guard told me to step back. I assessed the room. Security present, crowd present, open space. Drawing my weapon would have escalated. Standing down felt wrong. It felt completely wrong. But tactically — I stepped back. 

Then Kyle fired. The guard fired. And then everyone just walked away. Like it was a weather event. 

I’ve seen things in my career that I won’t put on tape. I’ve made decisions that I’ll carry until I don’t carry anything anymore. But I have never watched a crowd just meander away after two men were shot like that. Both brothers. Dead. I immediately thought about Piper’s story. Was she to blame for this?

I waited until the area cleared. Approached their bodies under a medical pretext — checked for vital signs, assessed their wounds. Also assessed for any physical electronic components consistent with synthetic construction. Wiring. Mechanical components. Anything sub-dermal that wouldn’t present externally. There was nothing. Just a couple of dead kids. 

I don’t know what a Synth is yet. Not really. I’ve heard the word. I’ve heard the fear around it. But I know that Riley and his brother Kyle were human. Were brothers. And the guards who were supposed to prevent it stood there and watched and then just walked away like it was nothing. 

Can they be trusted? 

Can anyone in this place be trusted? I’m going to need to figure that out fast. 

I met with Mayor McDonough. Got a lead on a local detective named Nick Valentine. Valentine Detective Agency. He pointed me there without much resistance — which means either Nick’s genuinely helpful or he wanted me pointed somewhere that wasn’t in his direction. Either way. It’s a lead.

The Valentine Detective Agency was being run by a woman named Ellie Perkins while Nick was absent…. Well, missing, specifically… Nick’s missing. Park Street Station. He was working a case that led him there. She said she tried to warn him he was walking into a trap but Nick went anyway. Said a family was looking for their daughter and he needed to find her and bring her back.

 Ellie’s been holding the agency together while he’s gone. That takes something. Holding something together for someone who might not be coming back. I didn’t say that to her. But I noted it. 

Park Street Station…. Vault one fourteen…. Ramirez. 

First light tomorrow. This is what the military calls a Personnel Recovery mission — a PR. Someone’s in there, alive or otherwise, and I’m going in to bring them out. The objective is the asset. Everything else is secondary. Nick Valentine is my fastest route to Shaun. Which means Nick Valentine comes home. Simple as that.

Clean your weapon. Every time. I don’t care how tired you are. I don’t care how long the day was. You clean your weapon before you sleep. PERIOD. 

Tomorrow morning I’m going into an unknown structure occupied by an unknown number of hostiles in an unknown configuration. And if I get to the point where I need this weapon and I reach for it and it fails me — that’s on me… Not the Commonwealth… Not the wasteland. Me.[PAUSE] Because I was too tired and I skipped a step. A clean weapon is one of the one variables I control completely. So… I control it.[LONG PAUSE] 

The bite on my arm is fine. I checked it again. Still fine. Still, just a bite. It’s fine.[LONG PAUSE] 

Diamond City is something. It’s loud and cramped and suspicious of everything and everyone and it smells like two hundred years of people living too close together in a space that wasn’t designed for it.

But the lights are on, and people are arguing about newspapers and politics and who’s a Synth and who isn’t, and as dysfunctional as all of that is — it’s alive. Whatever it is. It’s alive.

Nora would have had opinions about this place. [CHUCKLE] Strong ones. Loud ones. Probably aimed at the Mayor within the first ten minutes. [LONGER PAUSE] 

Before I settled in, I bartered some supplies at a couple of the shops in the market. I was able to trade some of the extra supplies and weapons I had accumulated at Diamond City Surplus, a shop ran by a jumpy woman named Myrna, who reluctantly did business with me even though she wasn’t convinced I was not a Synth… I was able to buy some stimpacks, Radaway, Med-X and some leather armor pieces.

I then went next door to Commonwealth weaponry and talked to Arturo. He was a standup fella, and bought a few of the pipe pistols, the sawed-off shotgun, and a pipe rifle off me. I was able to pick up a combat shotgun, 20 shotgun shells, and a medium range scope for the musket laser… those were great additions to my arsenal.

Leaving at first light. Intel asset recovery. No delays.

Tomorrow I’ll start to get some real answers.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO:

Diamond City. Still standing. Still loud. Still exactly what it was the last time I passed through.

But I want to talk about a few things from this tape tonight. Things that deserve more than a pass-through mention.

The first one is Kyle and Riley.

Two brothers. One deadly accusation. A crowd that watched and then walked away like they’d witnessed a mild argument.

I’ve seen that type of crowd before. That type of crowd isn’t unique to the wasteland, sugar. That crowd has always existed. The bombs didn’t create it. They just removed the pretense is all. The laws. The consequences. The social agreement that said we don’t do this — even when we want to. Strip all that away and you find out what people actually are when nobody’s keeping score.

Some of them are Kyle. Pointing a weapon at their own brother because a story felt true enough. Some are Nate Campbell. Feet moving before thinking, wanting to help. To stop something awful from happening. Then there’s the guard. Following orders or just being in cahoots. There’s always these kinds. In every crowd. In every city. In every wasteland.

The question is — which kind shows up when it matters? Which kind would you be?

Now. Let’s talk about synths.

Because this is Diamond City we’re talking about and you can’t talk about that place without talking about the fear that lives inside those walls. I know something about that fear. More than I’ll say tonight. But I want you to understand something about what Nate walked into today — because he doesn’t understand it yet himself.

That fear isn’t just gossip. It isn’t just politics. It’s a living thing inside that city. And well beyond those giant green walls. It breathes. It spreads. It grows.

Riley didn’t have synth components. Nate checked. Just a dead kid in jeans and a jacket with a bullet hole and nothing else. Just a story somebody told until it felt true enough to pull a trigger.

That’s what fear does when it goes unchallenged long enough. It stops needing evidence. It becomes its own evidence. If you’re not careful, honey, that kind of fear can drown out reason, intelligence, and measured thought. And when that happens, you just might find yourself in a similar situation as Kyle.

Nate’s going to have to reckon with that. What it means. What it costs. What kind of place Diamond City really is underneath the lights and the market and a good bowl of noodles.

Now. I want to talk about something else entirely.

“She talks fast. Thinks faster. Doesn’t back down from a confrontation even when the confrontation is clearly not going her way. Reminded me of —”

Mmmmhmmm.

Reminded him of???

Tactically useful. That’s all. Potential intelligence asset. Keep a distance. Don’t need complications. She’s useful until she’s not.

Sugar, I have heard a lot of people talk themselves out of something in my time. A lot of people. And that right there is a man talking himself out of something he hasn’t even admitted he’s thinking about yet.

Now. I’m not going to say more than that. It’s not my business and honestly it’s not yours either. Not yet anyway. But I noticed. And I think Nate noticed that he noticed. Which is probably why he said it twice.

There’s one more moment on that tape I want to address before I let ya go. It was brief. Easy to miss if you weren’t paying close attention.

When Ellie told him where Nick Valentine was last seen, he said two things.

Park Street Station. Vault 114.

And then one name. Quiet as a grave. And then he cleared his throat and moved on like a man who’s had a lot of practice moving on from things that cost him.

I’m not going to tell you what that name means tonight. That story belongs to the next tape. But I want you to remember that moment. The weight of it. The way Nate Campbell — who doesn’t seem to flinch, who doesn’t hesitate, who filed a Deathclaw as a lesson and just kept going — went quiet for just a breath when he heard where Nick went.

Whatever is waiting for him in that vault tomorrow, he already feels some kind of way about it.

The courier network has been humming lately. That old coot Gee Mail’s been stumbling by, spilling whiskey and dropping off letters. Every letter means something, sugar. Your story has value.

So if a moment on this tape stirred something up in ya — a thought, a question, an idea rattling around your head that won’t settle — write in. The courier network runs in all directions. Gee Mail will find me. Eventually.

Tomorrow Nate goes into that station. I’ve already heard what comes next. And sugar, ol’ Nate’s got a fight on two fronts ahead of him. So have your ears open, your cup full, and your radio on.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP12: Ghosts

Vault 114 was supposed to be a rescue mission. Get in, find Nick Valentine, get out. Then Nate looked down. A name tag on a skeleton in a tunnel full of Triggermen changed everything. What happened next wasn't professional. Wasn't clean. And Nate's not going to pretend otherwise. Nick Valentine is alive. Ramirez is still on that floor.

DUSTY INTRO:  

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils.

Grab yerself a comfy seat and pour yerself some of the good stuff… because tonight’s tape… well, sugar… it’ll want something from ya.

Now. Before the tape asks something of ya, I’m gonna — and I want you to actually think about it before you answer.

You ever laugh at something you’re not supposed to laugh at?

Not because you thought it was supposed to be humorous. But because sometimes the universe sets up something so perfectly cruel… so precisely timed… that the only honest response left is a laugh. The kind that comes up from somewhere deep and dark and has nothing to do with joy.

I know that laugh. And if you’ve seen enough of the cruel side of life, you’ll know that laugh too.

Now. I’ve been sitting with this tape for a few days.

Nate Campbell went into Park Street Station today looking for one thing.

The wasteland had other plans.

Sometimes life sets a trap so cruel…

The only thing left to do is tip your hat to it.

Tape twelve is now live.

NATE’S RECORDING: 

Log zero-one-two. November third, 2287. It’s day twelve since I was thawed out.

I don’t know where to start tonight. That’s not something I say. I always know where to start. Start at the beginning, talk through the mission. What worked, what didn’t. Inventory. Ammo used. What to improve on for next time. That’s how an after action report works. That’s how I’ve always done this.

Tonight… I genuinely don’t know where to start. Maybe I’m not sure how to start.

I’ll start with Swan Pond.

On the route to Park Street Station, you pass through what used to be the Public Garden. There’s a pond there. It’s called Swan Pond, and it was beautiful in the prewar days. You could rent a swan boat and paddle around the pond, laughing and enjoying the day. Now though? Still water that’s green and black and just wrong looking. I was moving through the perimeter of it — keeping distance, staying low — when I heard someone else moving through the park. I took cover behind an old armored personnel carrier and drew my laser musket.

Through the scope I saw him. A man. Alone. He didn’t move like someone who knew what he was doing out there. Too loud. Too open. He was just walking. Like he was on a casual stroll through the park. I stayed hidden and observed. This could have been a trap. Nobody that lives in this world could be that naive… could they?

Through the scope I could see he was holding something. A letter. He looked at it often as he walked. He walked right next to the water’s edge and paused, reading his letter. It was over quickly.

I don’t know exactly what came out of that pond. Not really. I’ve seen a Deathclaw now. Fought one. Killed one. I know what they look like. What they sound like. I thought they were the ceiling of what this world could produce. I thought nothing could be worse than them.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

Whatever that thing was, it’s not something I had the firepower or the position to engage. Not alone. Not with what I was carrying. This thing looked like a super mutant, but was a behemoth of a monster. I ducked inside the APC. It hadn’t seen me, but it sure saw that guy. He was too far away for me to do anything. I hoped he would run. But he just stood there. In shock maybe. That behemoth came out of that pond with what looked like a giant anchor and just… that man didn’t stand a chance.

I just watched. I didn’t do anything. What could I have done to that thing? Maybe if I had something with stopping power — a missile launcher — maybe then. But what could I have done? I decided to stay hidden. I made that assessment in about two seconds. I stood by it then and I am going to keep standing by it, because if I let myself question it I will never stop questioning it.

That man should have paid attention to his surroundings. He should have run. I can still hear him screaming. I don’t know if he knew anyone was close enough to hear him. I don’t know if it mattered. He was screaming and I was fifty meters away and I did not come out.

I’ve made hard calls before. I’ve chosen mission over instinct more times than I can count. This wasn’t that. This was something else entirely. This felt like the wasteland was showing me exactly what it is and exactly what it requires of me to survive in it. I don’t know how I feel about that yet. I’m going to have to figure it out another time.

Swan. That’s what that thing is called. I found hand-painted signs warning travelers. Swan went back in the water. I waited. Then I moved. I stopped at the body on my way past. Swan had thrown him about fifteen meters from the water. Half the letter was still in his hand. He was trying to get to someone. That’s all I could make out. He was just trying to get somewhere because someone he loved was there.

God dammit.

I left him where he was. I’m telling myself that was the right call. I’m going to keep telling myself that for a long while. I kept moving.

Park Street Station. I stopped at the top of the stairs. There was an open doorway at the bottom and I could hear talking. I listened. Triggermen. They sounded like they were pretending to be bad guys from some old black and white gangster movie. What happened to this world?

I fired a single round through the door frame from the top of the escalator and they came running like I’d rung a dinner bell. I’ve faced trained soldiers. I’ve faced men who knew what they were doing on a battlefield. These weren’t that. These were men who’d watched someone be intimidating once and decided to make a career of the impression. They died like amateurs. Quickly and without much drama. Four men. Dead in an open door, because they lacked tactical discipline. I moved in.

They all wore suits. All carried machine guns. They were pretending to be old time gangsters. But even a blind man is dangerous with a machine gun, so I needed to remain tactical. First landing — bathroom scale rigged as a pressure trap. Obvious placement. Disarmed it and moved to the lower landing. From there I had a pretty good sight line into the tunnel. I took out the laser musket and scoped in the first tango. After he went down, the amount of bullets that came my way was surprising. There were more than a few thugs down there and they all seemed to have endless ammo. I hugged the left wall, using their angle of fire against them. One at a time they would peek their head around the corner, and one at a time they would get a laser to the face. I moved into the tunnel. I needed to move deeper. To Vault 114.

As I made my way into the second half of the tunnel, I started taking fire. I dove behind some barrels for cover. These idiots were using a spray and pray tactic — just emptying their machine guns in my general direction and hoping to hit me. True amateurs. I wasn’t in immediate danger as I waited for an opening in the rate of fire. A professional team would stagger their fire. They would call out when they were reloading and ensure that there were always rounds heading downrange. The last thing you want is to have everyone reloading at the same time, because if your enemy is experienced — as I am — that mistake is a deadly one to make.

So I waited in cover. Got low. And that’s when I looked down.

There was a skeleton on the ground next to me. This wasn’t a completely abnormal thing in this new world — these things are scattered everywhere. I almost didn’t see the name tag. The Triggermen all started reloading at the same time. My opportunity to attack was open. But I just sat there. Frozen.

I think some part of me already knew before I looked down. But I looked down anyway.

Dr. R. Sanchez. That’s what the name tag said.

That was his cover name.

Ramirez.

There was a bullet hole in his skull. Clean entry. Close range. Professional. The laser musket hit the ground with a clank. It just slid out of my hand as I reached to gently touch the name tag.

I don’t remember the next few minutes very clearly. I know what happened. I have the tactical memory of it — the positions, the angles, the rounds fired, the confirmed drops. But the part of my brain that was supposed to be running the mission wasn’t running the mission anymore.

These men didn’t pull that trigger. I know that. My rational brain knows that with complete certainty. The men who killed Ramirez are not the men who were standing in that tunnel. Those men had been dead for two hundred years. But that didn’t matter. They were there. And they were breathing. And the bones of my friend were on the ground next to me with a bullet hole in his skull. And something in me just —

I cleared the rest of the vault. I won’t dress up what that looked like. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t professional. And it wasn’t the kind of work I’m proud of. I stopped treating them as combatants and I started blaming them for the death of my friend.

I took his name tag. It’s in my chest pocket now. Taped to the rings.

I’m the one that assigned him to that location. He was undercover as a construction manager because of me. We knew Vault-Tec was up to something with these vaults. We knew they were not just for safety and comfort after a nuclear event. So I sent him in to uncover evidence. To discover the truth behind this vault. To uncover Vault-Tec’s true intentions. I knew a construction manager would have had access to the kinds of records that could provide those answers. I knew Ramirez would find them. But a construction manager who started asking the wrong questions about what was really being built down there would have raised red flags for Vault-Tec. I never thought that would mean a bullet to the head.

Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe that’s why he’s on the floor of the tunnel with a bullet in his head instead of wherever he was supposed to end up. Maybe he was on his way to see me. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll never know. But I knew Ramirez. And if he found something down there that someone wanted to stay buried, he would have pulled that thread. Every single time. That was just who he was.

I don’t remember picking up my laser musket. I don’t remember firing it. Well, that’s not entirely true. I don’t want to remember.

I found Nick Valentine in the lower levels. He was alive. I suppose. I need to clarify something for the record — Nick is a synth. Early model. Says he was a prototype of the Institute, maybe between the second and third generation models. He started to explain more, but I told him quite bluntly that I didn’t give a shit. He had answers that I needed and that was all I cared about. He was cautious about me, and for good reason, until I told him Ellie sent me. I also told him he was welcome to die here if he’d rather.

I wasn’t warm about it. Our meeting and escape, I mean. I gave him orders. I moved him like an asset. I didn’t explain myself and I didn’t apologize and I didn’t give him any reason to trust the man who’d just shown up to extract him. I was still seeing red. I was still in revenge mode. I was still going to kill everyone down there.

The leader of that operation — a man named Malone — was still alive when I got to him. He had the few remaining Triggermen around him along with the young woman Nick was supposed to rescue. She was not going to be rescued and was trying to convince Malone to just kill us. Nick was pleading with her to come home, that her folks were worried about her. She laughed. I killed them where they stood. Him, his Triggermen, and his girlfriend. Nick didn’t interfere.

I’m not going to say more about that than I already have.

We got out. I got him out. That was the mission and the mission is complete and Nick Valentine is alive and I have my lead and tomorrow we find Kellogg. That’s the after action report. I’m not going to go over ammo and supplies tonight. I just have to get some stuff out. I cannot afford to have these things in my mind — distractions on the battlefield lead to bullets in your body. Maybe if I’m lucky enough to record again tomorrow night I’ll do a proper review. Today was just a lot.

I started a recording down there. After I found his remains, but before I found Nick. I found a quiet corner and I started recording something that wasn’t a log entry. It was for my friend. My second in command. My brother in arms. I finished it. And then I destroyed that tape.

That recording wasn’t for anyone else. It wasn’t for this log. It wasn’t for whoever finds these tapes after I’m gone. It was for him. And now it’s gone. And that’s where it belongs.

I treated Nick Valentine like a piece of equipment tonight. A man who just survived captivity. A man who followed my orders without complaint, who didn’t push back when he had every right to, who walked out of that vault next to me without knowing a single thing about why I was the way I was in there. That’s on me. I know that. He’s the best lead I have to finding Shaun. He’s a missing persons detective who just survived Vault 114 and he’s still willing to work with me — despite me treating him like a pack mule. I wasn’t a professional tonight. I was a grieving man with a weapon, rage, and a need for vengeance.

I know what I did in that tunnel. I know what it cost. I know what it says about where I am right now and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I can’t change what happened tonight. I know that. That’s not something I get to go back and redo. The mission is done. Ramirez is still on that floor. Nick is somewhere in this city probably wondering what the hell he got himself into. None of that changes when I close my eyes.

But the sun will rise tomorrow. It’ll still shine. Whether I’m ready or not. Whether I’ve figured any of this out or not. Whether I’m the man I’m supposed to be or not. The sun comes up and the next day starts and Shaun is still out there and Kellogg is still breathing and I still have work to do. That’s what I know. That’s what I can control.

Nick Valentine is alive. Ramirez is still on that floor.

I’m going to sleep now.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY’S OUTRO:

Yeah.

Alright.

Let’s talk about what just happened. Firstly, I’d like to start with the man in the park. Not the vault. Not what happened in the tunnel. The man in the park first.

He had a letter in his hand. A letter from someone he loved. He was trying to get somewhere because someone he loved was there. That’s all Nate could make out. That’s all there was to know. He was traveling in a world he wasn’t prepared for and it cost him his life.

Nate watched him die from fifty meters away and did not come out. Didn’t help him.

Now. I want to be very clear about something before I say anything else.

That was the right call.

I know what was in that pond. I’ve seen Swan from a distance and that was more than enough for me. There is nothing Nate was carrying that day — nothing short of a mini-nuke launcher and a death wish — that would have changed that outcome. Nothing.

The right call and the easy call are not the same thing though. And that particular right call is one of the hardest kinds there is to make.

I know that weight. The specific weight of watching something happen that you cannot stop. Of making the assessment — fast, clean, correct — and then having to live in the silence that comes after it.

You tell yourself it was the right call. It was. And you keep telling yourself that. And somewhere around the hundredth time you tell yourself… you almost believe it. Almost.

He kept moving. That’s what you do. You keep moving.

He stopped at the body on his way past. Of course he did. That’s who Nate Campbell is. He stopped. He looked. He acknowledged that a man died there who was just trying to get somewhere because someone he loved was somewhere else. He didn’t loot the body. He looked for a reason for that man to be there. To make it make any kind of sense. Then he kept moving.

Now. I want to talk about something you may have missed.

His weapon hitting the ground in that tunnel.

I want you to understand what that means. This is a man with extensive military experience. A dangerous man. A man who cleans his weapons before he sleeps regardless of how broken he is. A man for whom a weapon is not equipment — it’s an extension of himself. A professional’s most basic covenant with his own survival.

And under fire. In the middle of an active engagement.

His weapon hit the ground. It just slid out of his hand.

I’ve known warriors my whole life, sugar. True warriors, in every sense of the word. And I want you to understand something about what it takes to reach through all of that training — all of that discipline — and make a warrior’s hand open like that.

Nate saw a name tag on a corpse and immediately knew that name. He immediately knew that corpse. He immediately felt the guilt over what it meant.

He sent Ramirez there. He made that call. A leader’s call — not because Ramirez was expendable, not because Nate was unwilling to go himself — but because Ramirez was the right person for that specific job. Nate assigned Ramirez to that vault to go undercover during construction because he knew Ramirez would pull the threads and get answers.

I’ll be honest with you. There’s a part of me that bristles at the idea of sending someone else into harm’s way. I’ve known people who did it for the wrong reasons. Who stayed safe while others paid the price.

Nate Campbell is not that person.

He sent Ramirez because he was the best choice for a construction manager. Because the mission required the best. Because that’s what good leaders do — they put the right people in the right places and then they carry the weight of that decision regardless of the outcome.

Regardless of the outcome.

For Nate, it had only been months since he gave that order. Not two hundred years. Months. He gave that order and a few weeks later the world ended and his wife was murdered and his son was taken and he’s been running on grief and adrenaline for twelve days.

And then he crouched behind some barrels in a tunnel under Boston. And looked down.

I know something about carrying the weight of decisions that cost people their lives. I was young. Very young. And the world I grew up in didn’t give me the luxury of choices that felt clean. You did what you had to do to survive. Or you didn’t survive. It was as simple and as terrible as that.

I did what I had to do. I survived. They didn’t.

And I’ve carried every single moment of it in my heart every single day since. Every face. Every decision. Every desperate cry of pain and confusion. Everything I wish I could undo. I carry all of it. Still.

So when Nate said he started a recording. And finished it. And then destroyed it.

I had to sit with that for quite a while, my little devils.

He put it into words. He gave it a container. He said goodbye to his friend in the only way left available to him. And then he let it go. He destroyed it. Then he continued his mission.

I’ve never done that. Not once. Not for a single thing.

I wonder what that would feel like. To put something terrible into words. To give it a place to live outside of your chest. To say the thing. And then watch it burn.

Maybe someday. Not yet. But maybe someday.

Now. Nick Valentine.

I’m going to say two things about how Nate treated Nick tonight and I want you to hear both of them equally.

First — it was wrong. A man who just survived captivity deserved better than orders barked at him by someone who wouldn’t explain themselves. Nick Valentine did nothing wrong. He followed every instruction without complaint and walked out of that vault next to a man who was treating him like a tool. That’s on Nate. And Nate knows it.

Second — I understand it. Completely. Not excuse it. Understand it. There’s a difference.

The man who treated Nick like a pack mule is the same man who recorded a private goodbye to his dead friend and destroyed the tape so he could let it go. That’s not a cold man. That’s a man who was temporarily somewhere else. Somewhere dark and private and not available for basic human decency.

We’ve all been there. Some of us live in that space more than others do.

What matters is that Nick stayed. Nick Valentine — who had every reason to walk away — stayed. I suspect Nate knows exactly what that did to Nick. And I would suspect Nate knows that’s going to matter later.

Before I let you go tonight, that Hot Mail Girl came in earlier this week with a dispatch tucked under her arm. She was on and on about how Gee Mail’s always trying to get in her drawers. I doubt it though, unless she has a jug of moonshine down there. He’s probably not interested.

This one came from a fella named Dave. Eastern Commonwealth. He wrote —

“Dear Dusty. I wanted to write in and tell you that I too had a rough childhood. I was sent to many different families growing up and had to move often. I was always the new kid and found it hard to make friends. I got into trouble and was even shot at once. But I kept trying to do better. To be better. Now, as an adult I have a loving wife, a good job, and two kids. I want people to know that your past doesn’t define your future. I stumbled across your show a few weeks back and have been tuning in every week since. Keep the signal strong. We’re listening out here.”

Dave. Thank you for that.

Your past doesn’t define your future. You and Nora have that in common. The world would be a better place with more of us taking that kind of thinking on. Keep the letters coming in, my little devils. I read every one of them.

Nick Valentine is alive.

Ramirez is still on that floor.

And tomorrow the sun comes up anyway.

Stay close to the signal, sugar.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP13: Reflection

Nate has a name. Conrad Kellogg. He has a detective, a dog, and a trail that starts tomorrow morning.But today — he walks. He talks to a dog about Ramirez, about Nick, about what kind of man he's going to be. And he comes back lighter for it.The hunt begins at first light.

DUSTY INTRO

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils.

Find a comfy seat, grab something to munch on and settle in. I’ve got another recording from our boy Nate Campbell to share with ya. Now, I want to ask ya something before we get into it.

You ever watch somebody change? Watch them become a different person? Now, I’m not talking about a physical change like a werewolf with a machine gun. No. I mean when they don’t even know it’s happening yet.

An internal change. Not dramatic. Not some big moment where they look in a mirror and decide to be a different person. Just a slow shift. Gradual. Subtle. Inevitable. And completely invisible to the person doing it.

Those are the most interesting people to watch, sugar. The ones who are changing not because they want to… but because the world wants them to. That’s the difference, sugar. The world decides they’re needed and that’s all there is to it. They start becoming that thing the world needs.

We’ve been listening to these tapes for a while now. Twelve days of Nate Campbell talking to a Pip-Boy recorder in the dark. And I want to tell you something I’ve noticed. Something I think is important.

He came out of that vault a soldier. Mission focused. Tactical. A man who processes the world through threat assessment and inventory counts and after action reviews.

Make no mistake, honey. That man is still there. Don’t misunderstand me.

But something else is showing up too. Quietly. In the small moments. A man starting to notice the world around him instead of just moving through it. Reacting to it.

That’s not nothing, sugar. In this wasteland, that’s everything.

Tape thirteen is now rolling.

NATE RECORDING

Log zero-one-three. November fourth, 2287. Third night at the Dugout Inn. Room two.

Vadim and Yefim are two brothers that run this joint. They were at the bar when I came in tonight. Yefim called me his number one customer and Vadim told me they were going to put a plaque above the door in my honor. They both laughed. Loudly.

That was unexpected. That little moment. Two brothers running a bar in a baseball stadium at the end of the world, and they took the time to make a stranger feel like a regular. People are building lives out here. Real ones. And that’s worth noting.

I had a shot of whiskey at the bar. One. I’m not drowning my sorrows or anything. It’s been that kind of day and my brain needed something to take the edge off before bed. A man who can’t sleep is a man who can’t function and I need to function tomorrow.

Dogmeat is on the bed. Asleep. I didn’t invite him there. He just made that decision independently and with considerable confidence. I’ve decided not to press the issue. I’d imagine it wouldn’t matter if I did anyway.

I’ll run through the day.

I woke up early and ate some instamash and the last of my mole rat chunks. Washed it all down with a Nuka-Cola. Breakfast of champions.

Left here at oh-six-hundred and went straight to Valentine’s agency first. Nick and Ellie were both there already. Does she live there? I filed that away for another time. I gave them the details on the man who killed Nora and took Shaun — everything I knew. Nick confirmed the name. Said that sounded like a man named Conrad Kellogg and that he used to live in Diamond City. Said he had a kid with him.

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of him having a kid with him. Nick noticed and clarified. A boy. Around ten years old.

Couldn’t be Shaun then. I felt my heart sink.

Nick must have noticed my shift. He just looked at me for a brief moment, then said we should check out Kellogg’s old house here in town. Nick said he was a very bad man. A very dangerous man. Again, he gave me a look. I didn’t need a college degree to understand what that look meant.

We left his office and headed to Kellogg’s old home. It was a unit near the western wall of the stadium, kind of all by itself — which struck me as a little odd. There was limited space in this old stadium for houses. Why allow one to be by itself? When we arrived, it was locked. Nick said he would stand guard if I wanted to try and pick the lock. We both gave it a shot but neither could get the door open. He suggested I go talk to the Mayor and see if he’d give me the key.

I’ll be honest — I could have picked that lock but I didn’t. I wanted to see what skill Nick had. I’m not sure I can trust him after the way I treated him yesterday. As I was walking up to see the Mayor, it occurred to me that he may have done the same thing in order to get me to talk with the Mayor. He saw me yesterday as a battering ram. A single-minded killer. Maybe he was testing me as well. It’s exactly what I would have done. I smiled. I think I’ll like Nick.

Mayor McDonough was predictably useless. Everything about that man is performance. I didn’t waste time on him. His secretary was a different story. I asked for the key and she said she couldn’t hand out keys to someone who didn’t own the house. I told her I understood, but asked her to find it in her heart to help me. I laid out my story. Briefly, but honestly. She read the situation — I think she could see what I was carrying in my face — and she made a quiet decision. Stepped away from her desk and the key was just sitting there. It would be gone when she got back.

She didn’t have to do that. She did it anyway. In a city that watched two brothers die in a market and just kept going like that was a normal thing, that matters. Good people are always around.

Kellogg’s house. Nick and I went through it top to bottom. Nothing on the surface. A bed, a sleeping bag, a desk and some junk. But the dimensions were wrong — the place looked smaller inside than it should. We kept searching. I found a switch under the desk. Hidden room behind it. A torture room from the look of it. Whatever Kellogg was, he wasn’t hiding that from himself. That told me a lot about the kind of man he is.

There were cigars there. Unique brand — nothing else like them in Diamond City. There were enough of them to suggest Kellogg liked this brand. Nick said a dog with a good nose could track that scent anywhere in the Commonwealth.

I knew exactly which dog.

I told Nick I’d be back. That I knew just the dog for this, but would have to go get him. He said he’d wait at his office. Before I left I grabbed what I felt may be useful from Kellogg’s house. There wasn’t much, but in the secret room there were some .44 rounds, two Nuka-Cola Quantums, and three Nuka-Cherrys.

I left Diamond City on foot heading northwest. Back to Dogmeat.

The walk to Sanctuary Hills is about two and a half hours at a sustained tactical pace. I made it there without much fuss. Had a few wild mongrels and a mole rat nest to deal with, but they were hardly worth mentioning.

Arrived at Sanctuary a little past eleven hundred. Preston was waiting. He had another settlement that needed help — raiders, same pattern as Tenpines. I told him no.

He just stared blankly at me. I repeated the word. No. Not yet. Not right now. I told him about Tenpines. The settlers are connected with the Minutemen now. It’s started. That’s real progress and he should build on it. I have a feeling he’ll wait for me to do the building though.

He pushed on the Minutemen. What they could be. What my involvement could mean for the Commonwealth. I heard him. I respect him. And I told him plainly — I have a son to find and a killer to hunt. The Minutemen will have to wait.

He didn’t argue. Good man.

Dogmeat was in the yard when I came over the bridge. If I needed any reminder of why I made that walk, the way that dog moved when he saw me was it. No complications. No history. Just there. Ready.

We walked back together. Two and a half hours. Actually it was longer. I had a lot on my mind. I’ve been going since I thawed out. Twelve days. One thing after another. Raiders, a Deathclaw, Vault 114, the tunnel, Ramirez, Nick. No real pause between any of it. No debrief. No time to just think things through. No psych eval. No team to process it with. To plan with. To mourn with.

Pre-war, after an operation, we had a process. A real one. Sit down with people trained to help you put it somewhere. Make sense of what happened. File it correctly so it doesn’t eat you from the inside. I never thought much of those sessions at the time. But I would give almost anything for one of those sessions right now. That wasn’t an option though.

What I had instead was a road, a dog, and time. I used it to my full advantage.

Dogmeat walked beside me the whole way back from Sanctuary. Just there. No judgment. No agenda. No questions I couldn’t answer. I talked to him. More than I’ve talked to anyone since I thawed out. Not about tactics. Not about the mission. Just talked.

About Nora. About Shaun. About Ramirez and what I did in that tunnel. About Nick and how I treated him. About the settlements and Preston and what the Minutemen are trying to build out here. About whether the man I’ve been for the past twelve days is the man I actually am or just what the wasteland has made of me so far. About what kind of man I was going to be.

He listened. He didn’t cast judgment. He just listened. He also ate something off the road that I can only describe as concerning. But he listened.

That walk was my debrief. The only one available to me out here. And as debriefs go, it was as good as they get. I felt lighter somehow. Like a weight was lifted.

I know what I did in that tunnel. How I treated Nick. What I became. I’ve said it. I’m not proud of my actions. I also can’t undo them and I’m not going to spend the rest of this mission bleeding from those decisions. I know what it cost. And I know what better looks like. I’m not there yet. But I’m walking towards it. That has to be enough for now.

We made it back to Diamond City by sixteen hundred and stopped by the market to resupply for tomorrow. Sold off some extra gear and stocked up properly for the next phase of this mission. Bought ammo, food, medicine, and water.

Current inventory — combat shotgun with thirty-five shells. Ten millimeter with sixty-eight rounds. Laser musket with twenty fusion cells. I also bought six .308 rounds, should I find a proper sniper rifle. I only have nineteen thirty-eight rounds for the pipe rifle, so I will be selective with those. I have my combat knife affixed to my belt for easy retrieval if needed. Bought some more Rad-X, RadAway, stimpaks, and some more food and water. Weapons maintenance was performed at the work table to ensure exceptional performance. Everything is now clean, oiled, and ready.

Dogmeat got a cut of meat from Polly at Choice Chops. I grabbed a steak for myself. I stopped by on the way back to the Dugout Inn. I wanted to pay for the room a few days in advance. Wasn’t sure when or if I would make it back, but having a place to stay was important and I wasn’t about to stay in Kellogg’s old place. Yefim was beaming when I paid him the caps. I prepaid for four nights, just in case.

A ghoul approached me while I was at the bar. Said his name was Edward Deegan and that he had a dangerous job, something right up my alley according to him, and wanted to talk to me about it. I told him I didn’t have time right now. He said to look him up at the Cabot house when I was ready and marked it on my map. I filed it. Whatever that is, it can wait.

Tomorrow morning Nick and I take Dogmeat to Kellogg’s house. The cigars are waiting in that secret room. The scent is still there. Dogmeat will pick it up and we’ll follow it wherever it goes.

Kellogg is at the end of that trail. Somewhere. And Shaun. Or answers about Shaun.

I’ve been chasing a nameless man for twelve days. A face I only know from a cryo chamber. A man who shot my wife and took my son and walked away thinking he left nothing dangerous behind him. Now I have a name for that face. I have a plan to find him. And if Nick thinks I am ruthless now, he hasn’t seen anything yet.

Tomorrow everything changes. Whatever’s left of my soul can feel it.

Dogmeat just shifted on the bed. Took up approximately seventy percent of the available surface area. I’m going to need the other thirty percent in about ten minutes so I’m wrapping this up.

Third night at the Dugout Inn. Room two. Dog on the bed. Clean weapons. Full ammo. A trail that starts at first light.

That’s enough for now. I am getting a full night’s sleep.

Tomorrow we go hunting.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY OUTRO

A road, a dog… and time.

That’s what he had. And he used every bit of it.

I want to start with something not so small. Something you may have skipped over. May have dismissed.

The locked door.

Neither of them could get it open… or could they have? Nick suggested the Mayor. And Nate — a man who has picked locks, disarmed traps, and navigated a vault full of armed Triggermen without breaking stride — walked away from that locked door. A locked door that probably held clues to his stolen son. And he walked away. Because he wanted to see what Nick would do.

And then on the way to the Mayor’s office it hit him. Nick might have done the exact same thing. May have tested him right back. Two people who don’t trust each other yet, both pretending they can’t do something they absolutely can… just to find out who the other one really is.

He smiled.

Sugar, Nate Campbell smiled.

I don’t know if you caught the weight of that. After everything that happened in that tunnel. After Ramirez. After the way he treated Nick on the way out. After two days of carrying all of that.

He smiled because he recognized something in Nick Valentine that he respects. Something he knows all too well about himself.

That’s not a small thing, sugar. That’s a man finding his way back to himself one step at a time.

Now. The boy.

Nick mentioned Kellogg had a kid with him. I can only imagine how hard that statement hit Nate. Only to have the excitement stolen away when he was told the kid was around ten years old. That had to be a hell of an emotional ride.

I don’t have those motherly instincts women are always going on about. In my experience most children grow up to be assholes. But that don’t mean ol’ Dusty can’t feel something. Or recognize when someone else does. And sugar, Nate felt that one hard. But he didn’t break. Didn’t cry. Didn’t lash out. He just filed it away and took the next step.

That’s discipline, my little devils.

Let’s talk about something that’s been sitting with me since I first heard this tape.

Nate Campbell is one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever heard of. And I’ve encountered some truly dangerous people in my time. He’s efficient. Precise. Completely without hesitation when the situation demands it. He walked into a vault full of armed men and cleared it. He killed Malone and his people where they stood without a second thought. He waited for a Behemoth to go back in the water, then kept moving like that was just a thing that happens on a Tuesday.

In this wasteland, people like that usually end up one of two ways.

They either become raiders. Taking what they want because they can. Living without rules, without remorse. Like nothing can stop them. The violence becomes the point. The capability becomes the identity.

Or they become something else entirely. Something rarer. Something the wasteland doesn’t quite know what to do with.

A person who can do terrible things. And still feel the weight of them.

Nate Campbell told his dog about Ramirez on a broken road because he needed to tell someone and his dog was what he had. He processed his guilt over Nick Valentine out loud to an animal who couldn’t judge him. He noticed a secretary stepping away from her desk and called it courage. He watched two brothers make a stranger feel like a regular and called it worth noting.

This is the same man who cleared Vault 114 with extreme violence of action and without remorse.

Both of those things are true. Simultaneously. In the same chest.

I know a little something about that.

I’m not going to say more than I should tonight. But I will say this.

There are people in this wasteland who made themselves hard because hardness was the only thing that kept them alive. Who did things they will never speak aloud to anyone. Who carry weight that has no container and no release and no debrief and no dog to listen on a broken road.

And the question those people live with — the one that doesn’t go away no matter how many miles they put between themselves and the thing they did — is whether the hardness will define them. Whether what you have done is who you are.

Nate talked to a dog about it for three and a half hours and came back lighter. He has learned ways to let things go and to move with decisions and not because of them.

I’ve never heard anyone speak about this before. The wasteland — well, the world — is unforgiving and makes you do hard things. We’ve all done things to survive that we’re not proud of. No judgment here, sugar. But to give those moments time, to give them recognition, and then just let them go? That is something yer gal Dusty needs to try.

I’ll be honest though. I’m not sure who I would be after. And that scares me more than anything. Maybe someday.

The world needs humanity, sugar. Even when it doesn’t deserve it. Maybe especially then.

Nate drew a line today. Told Preston no. Not because he doesn’t care about the Commonwealth or the people in it. But because he knows what his mission is and he knows what it costs to lose focus on it. That’s not coldness. That’s discipline. There’s a difference. And the fact that he feels the pull — that he hears Preston and respects him and still says no — that’s the moral compass doing its job.

Most people out here have lost that compass entirely. The wasteland has a way of taking it from you if you’re not careful. Trading it for survival one small decision at a time until one day you look up and you don’t recognize yourself anymore.

Nate Campbell is twelve days out of a cryo pod and his compass is still pointing true.

I find that remarkable. I find that worth broadcasting.

Third night at the Dugout Inn. Room two. Dogmeat on the bed, not asking neither.

Tomorrow the trail starts. Kellogg is at the end of it somewhere.

And whatever’s left of Nate Campbell’s soul is ready.

Now, before I forget — thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the signal. Thank you for writing in and telling me your stories. Thank you for taking some time out of your daily survival to listen to yer ol’ gal Dusty ramble on a bit on these old airwaves. I really appreciate it.

Until next time, keep yer weapons clean and yer belly full.

Stay close to the signal, sugar.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP14: Hunting

Nate Campbell finally has a name for the man who killed his wife and took his son. Conrad Kellogg.This episode follows the hunt through the Commonwealth — Diamond City to Fort Hagan — with Nick Valentine and Dogmeat running the trail. Thirty hours. One cigar at a time.He made it. He found him.The rest of the story has to wait until morning.

Dusty Intro

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils.

Pull up close tonight. Pour yerself something warm and get comfortable. Because tonight’s tape is a different kind of animal.

So far, we’ve been listening to Nate Campbell react to this wasteland. For fourteen days, he’s been reacting to what came at him. His family destroyed, giant bugs, Deathclaws, raiders, tunnels and grief and guilt and all manner of things this wasteland has seen fit to throw at him.

And he’s handled every bit of it. Adapted. Dealt with it. Kept moving.

But tonight?

Tonight our boy’s not reacting to anything.

Tonight, he’s hunting.

Now, I’d be doing this tape a disservice if I didn’t mention who’s really leading this hunting party.

Dogmeat.

That dog’s been by Nate’s side through more miles of broken wasteland than most people cover in a year. And tonight he earns every bit of trust Nate has placed in him. That dog’s got a nose that doesn’t lie and a heart that doesn’t quit.

The Commonwealth could learn something from that dog.

And Nate? Despite needing revenge, needing answers, he continues to surprise.

Tape fourteen is now rolling.

 

Nate Recording

Log zero-one-four. November fifth, 2287.

I’m back at the Dugout Inn. Room two. It’s morning. Nick, Dogmeat, and I have been moving for thirty hours straight. Right now I just need to get this down while I can still string a sentence together with some form of structure.

I’ll start from this morning.

We left Diamond City to start the hunt for Kellogg. Dogmeat found the trail almost immediately and started heading northwest. We hadn’t gotten that far from Diamond City — still in the downtown area — when I heard a woman screaming for help down a side street.

Went toward it on instinct. She pointed at a door, said they’re inside, needed help — and bolted. Yeah. Sure, lady. That’s not how people who actually need help behave. But I needed to see what this was, one way or the other.

I told Nick and Dogmeat to hold position and I went in. Low and slow. Good thing I did. Heard them talking before I saw them. Two guys talking louder than they should. Planning. Well, much less planning and much more unearned bravado and unleashed dumbassery. This wasn’t a rescue. It was a setup. They’d been luring people into that store — good people, the kind who hear someone scream and go running — and gunning them down the second they walked into the lobby.

Four of them. Two men, two women. Four people who looked around this broken world and decided they could break it further. That just pissed me right off. This little scheme was ending in blood. Right now.

I slowly worked my way through the kill zone they’d hastily assembled. Shelving units arranged to funnel their victims in. I took my time and found a place to hide behind the last shelf that gave me a view of the room and waited. Idiots like these wouldn’t have the patience that an experienced operator has. The first two never even knew I was there. They stood up to investigate and were quickly dispatched. Bullets sent from the shadows.

The third — a woman — came out with her hands up, running towards me. She was frantically yelling that she was forced into this, that she needed my help. As she got close though, she drew a pistol and fired wide. I put three rounds in her. Belly, chest, face. I let weapon climb do the work. If you’ve ever fired a gun in rapid succession, you’ve noticed that it wants to climb with each successive shot. Experienced warriors use this to their advantage to paint the target using what’s called the zipper drill. It’s lethally effective.

The last raider — also a woman — gave her position away by screaming something about my mother. I put a round in her head and shut her up. Checked the warehouse in back. Bodies. A lot of them. This had been going on for a while.

This world. We should be helping each other survive out here. Not turning kindness into a kill box.

Met back up with Nick and Dogmeat. Nick asked why I did it. I just looked at him — genuinely confused by the question. Why wouldn’t I? Either somebody needed help or somebody needed stopping. Both were true today.

He thanked me. That caught me off guard. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks being a weapon. Having someone thank me for being a person. I didn’t have a response ready for that. I just nodded and moved out.

Dogmeat picked the trail back up like nothing happened. Took us to a creek — chair, table, one of Kellogg’s cigars sitting right there like he’d just stepped away. His brand. No mistaking it. We’re on him. I patted Dogmeat on the head. He bounded off, back on the trail. Tail wagging.

From there we moved out to an old train depot. Looked like Kellogg had cleared out a raider camp there himself. Whoever this guy is, he can operate. Good to know. Means he will be confident in his ability to handle a grieving father.

Railroad tracks after that. Dogmeat was moving faster now, nose to the ground, totally focused on the trail, when something came out of the tree line. It looked like a bear, but wrong. Too big. Too fast. Too mangy. It caught me by surprise. I had been too focused on Dogmeat to see it. It was almost on top of me before Dogmeat hit it broadside. Bought me the half second I needed. Emptied the combat shotgun into its flank. It went down, but it wasn’t dead. Nick was there firing as well and that bought me the few moments to reload with the last of my twelve rounds. I have four left. That is not acceptable. Dogmeat saved my bacon again. This dog. I swear.

Found another of Kellogg’s stops — looked like he’d sat there too. I’ll admit, by this point I wasn’t moving tactically anymore. I was moving fast. Too fast. Got us ambushed by a pack of feral ghouls. My emotions were running on rocket fuel. Dogmeat took some real damage that time. Two stims on him, one on myself. My shotgun is now a club.

Had to remind myself — I won’t find Shaun if I’m dead. We kept moving.

A few miles up the road we saw some kind of robot. Nick called it an Assaultron. Said they’re dangerous. Real dangerous. But this one wasn’t. It laid there repeating something about not feeling its legs — which made sense. It had been ripped in half. Whatever did this to it left one of Kellogg’s cigars sitting right next to the pieces.

Smug bastard. Leaving his calling card on top of a dying killing machine.

And then we saw it. Fort Hagan.

I know that name. Pre-war. I was stationed there. Before the unit, before any of that. Just an infantryman, learning how the Army actually worked day to day. It wasn’t bad duty. Honestly, it was good. The fort had everything — barracks, a pool, a little shopping strip, a bar everyone went to on Friday nights. Felt more like a small town than a military post some days.

I remember one evening. End of a training day. I was heading out the north gate toward the bar — me and a couple guys from my platoon, already talking about what we were gonna drink.

And I saw her.

She was coming out of the JAG building. Across post, southeast side. Civilian. A lawyer, I found out later. She had a folder under one arm, fighting with it because the wind kept catching the pages. Dark blue blazer. Hair pulled back but coming loose from the wind.

It was late September. That smell right before fall really hits — cut grass, somebody grilling somewhere, that first cold edge in the air that tells you summer’s done arguing about it.

I didn’t even know her name yet. Just stood there for a second like an idiot while my friends kept walking.

Nora.

What am I doing?

I’m sitting here talking about a folder and the smell of cut grass when I should be —

Fort Hagan is right there. Was right there. I went in. I fought through it. I found Kellogg. I —

I can’t. Not right now. I physically cannot put the rest of today into words right now.

I’m not avoiding it. I just don’t have anything left right now. I’ve been awake too long and if I try to push through this part I’m going to get it wrong. And this part matters too much to get wrong.

I need to sleep.

I’ll finish this when I wake up.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out. For now.

Dusty Outro

Cut grass.

Somebody grilling somewhere.

That first cold edge in the air that tells you summer’s almost ready to pack it in for a spell.

I’ve never experienced any of those things. Not the way he described them. Not in a world where they meant safety. Normalcy. I’ve never felt safe enough to make plans with friends — you gotta have friends first — to just move about freely without a care in the world.

That prewar life must have been something. Can you even imagine a world so safe that people just met up? Not for trading, not for safety, or hunting, or killing. But just because there wasn’t nothing else to do?

Sugar. That’s a different kind of world entirely.

Let’s talk about what just happened on that tape. Because there’s more to unpack than you might think and I want to do it right.

First. That hardware store scheme.

Four people looked around this broken world and decided the best use of their time was turning kindness into a weapon. Luring good people — the kind who hear a scream and run toward it instead of away — and punishing them for it. Killing them for it.

That’s not survival. That’s something uglier than survival. That’s a choice. An ugly choice for ugly people.

And Nate walked in alone. I have a feeling he knew exactly what he was walking into. But he walked in anyway. Afterwards Nick asked him why he did it. And Nate looked at him like the question didn’t make sense. Like the answer was so obvious it barely needed saying.

Either somebody needed help or somebody needed stopping.

Sugar, we’ve all met these people out there in the wasteland. Hard people. Broken people. People who decided a long time ago that the only sensible response to a world this cruel was to become part of the cruelty. Hell, we probably expect to be met with cruelty before a stranger even has a chance of saying hi. That’s just the way of the wasteland.

But here comes a man from a different time. A different viewpoint. And he ain’t having none of what the wasteland is trying to serve him. And that’s such a strange thing to see out here that Nick Valentine thanked him for being what? Just a good person.

Think about what that means. A man who has spent two weeks being a weapon — clearing vaults, watching people die, making calls that cost him sleep — getting thanked not for any of that. But for walking into a hardware store because somebody screamed.

He didn’t have a response ready for that. I’m not surprised.

Now. The hunt itself.

Dogmeat ran that trail like he was born for it. Creek. Raider camp. Railroad tracks. Every stop Kellogg made, that dog found it. Nose down. Tail up. Completely certain in a world that offers certainty to almost nobody.

There’s something to be said for that kind of faith. The kind that doesn’t require proof. Just a scent and a direction and the willingness to keep going. I think that’s what Nate needed today. Something that certain moving beside him.

Now. He admitted something on that tape that I want you to catch.

He stopped moving tactically. Started running. Got tunnel vision on the trail and stopped watching his flanks.

For ol’ Nate Campbell, that’s the equivalent of a complete system failure. That man moves tactically the way most people breathe. Without thinking. Without choosing. It just happens. Until he loses focus.

Today Kellogg was close enough to smell and twelve days of grief and rage finally got loud enough to drown out all his training. It almost cost him Dogmeat.

He caught it. Corrected. Kept moving.

That’s the discipline showing up even when the emotion is winning. Not eliminating the feeling — just refusing to let it make any more of the decisions.

There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

And then. Fort Hagan.

And her.

A dark blue blazer. Hair coming loose in the wind. A folder she couldn’t quite hold onto. The smell of cut grass and somebody’s grill and that first honest breath of autumn.

He didn’t even know her name yet. But all it took was a look. Just a look. And he stood there like an idiot while his friends kept walking.

I want you to understand something about what just happened on that tape. What he just revealed about the kind of man he is.

Nate Campbell — a man who took down a Deathclaw, who cleared a vault without breaking stride, who is by all definitions a warrior, a killer — saw a woman he didn’t know and just stopped.

Now I can’t tell you what that feels like. I ain’t got no idea about loving. I’ve known passion. Desire. But never love. Not for a person anyway.

But his mind went there. On purpose. Maybe not consciously. But on purpose. Because what came next was too much to carry without stopping somewhere safe first.

I do know that feeling though. Not the memory — I don’t have memories like that. Not a September evening or a woman with a folder or friends walking ahead of me toward somewhere easy. But the instinct. The way the mind finds the one warm thing it has left and holds onto it for just a second before it has to face what’s coming.

I know that instinct. Very well.

He said her name. Just the one word.

Nora.

And then he caught himself. Tried to keep going. Tried to finish the after action report. But he couldn’t.

I’m not going to tell you what he found in that fort tonight. That story belongs to the next tape. What I will tell you is this.

A man who has been running on rage and grief and mission focus for thirty hours made the decision to rest before finishing. So he wouldn’t rush through. Wouldn’t skip anything.

That’s not weakness, sugar. That’s a man recognizing his limits and respecting them. Even now. Even here. Even after everything. Nate went back to her. That’s love doing what love does.

He signed off differently tonight. You catch that? Not his usual clean sign-off. Not the rank and the name and the period at the end.

Out. For now.

Two words that say everything about where he is right now. The mission isn’t done. The recording isn’t done. He isn’t done. But he needs to stop. Just for a few hours. Just long enough to put something down and pick it back up when he can carry it properly.

The courier network’s been humming. Letters finding their way to me from out there in the static. Every one of them matters. If this tape stirred something in ya — if you’ve got a memory like that, a safe place your mind goes when something too big is coming at ya — write in. Tell ol’ Dusty all about it. You don’t have to share the details. But if you do, I’ll read every word. That matters more than you know, sugar.

Next tape, we get to hear the story of a reckoning.

Until then. Go ahead and count yer radroach eggs before they hatch. Because who’s gonna stop ya?

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP15: Kellogg

Twelve days. Everything it cost him to get to that room.And when it was finally over — nothing.Nate Campbell goes into Fort Hagan, fights through an army of synths, and finds the man who killed his wife and took his son. The reckoning he's been carrying for two weeks finally arrives.It ends exactly the way it had to.And it feels like nothing at all.

DUSTY’S INTRO

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal my little devils. Hope you’ve got yer backside parked someplace comfy… because today,  our boy Nate goes into Fort Hagan. He came back to finish what he couldn’t finish with his last recording. That alone should tell you something. Tape fifteen is now rolling.

NATE’S HOLOTAPE

Log zero-one-five. It’s still November fifth, 2287.

Slept harder than I have since I thawed out. Woke up disoriented for a second — didn’t know where I was, didn’t know what day it was. I think I just kind of shut down. After yesterday. After Kellogg. I think the adrenaline dump just wiped me out. I slept solid. Deep. Didn’t dream. I think my body, my mind, needed to shut off for a little bit.

I just sat there in bed, listening to the noise of the bar outside my door. Then I remembered. I left a recording unfinished.

I’m not going to listen to what I recorded earlier. I know what’s on it. I’ll just get back to it.

Fort Hagan.

We came in from the north side. Two turrets caught us before we got close — pinned us flat for a minute. We waited them out. A turret will lock on to your position, but it will only stay that way for as long as it can sense you there. If you stay out of sight, silent, or motionless, they will go back to patrol mode. We scaled the scaffolding set up on the outside of the main building and kept our heads below the sight line. That way we could see the turrets before they saw us. It took some work, but we got up onto the roofline, dropping five turrets on the way to the east side of the roof. There we found a hatch that led into the second floor kitchen area.

I knew about this hatch from my time training here. I had a buddy, Private First Class Thomas, who worked in the kitchen and would sneak me and my buddies some food from time to time. We would sneak out of the barracks and meet him at the hatch in the middle of the night. As with most things, we did that one too many times and the last time it wasn’t PFC Thomas — it was Master Sergeant Hill at the hatch. We were smoked the rest of that night. Push-ups, sit-ups, running in place. All night long. But it was worth it for the memories.

Anyway. The exterior was quiet, so Nick and I made our way through the hatch.

Inside was a different story. Synths were in the kitchen and hallway. First ones I’d seen up close. Nick saw my face when the first one came around the corner. It looked almost human. No — not human, but human shaped. A humanoid, but silver. They moved on two legs and fired laser pistols. Nick just looked at it. Then at me. Said, “Don’t worry. It’s not like we’re related.” Then he put it down himself. Clean shot.

I think that was for my benefit more than his. Giving me permission, almost. Making sure I didn’t hesitate looking at something that looked like him, even a little. I didn’t hesitate. But I appreciated it anyway.

That meant a lot to me. That Nick could instantly see a potential problem and address it with humor and lethality at the same time. I’m gaining more respect for him with each passing minute.

We cleared room after room. Turrets, synths, even a Protectron on the first floor landing that I thought would make a good patrol scout. That was a bad idea. I used a terminal to activate it, thinking it would go out ahead and draw enemy fire, giving us a heads up to where they were. But instead — rather predictably — it immediately pegged us as a threat and began firing lasers at us. We had to return fire, which acted like a dinner bell to all remaining synths in the area and we were immediately swarmed. I had to use two stimpaks on myself and one on Nick during that one fight.

That’s actually something I need to ask him about later. Why would a stimpak work on him at all? I’ll file that question away for now.

We made our way through the floor until we found a broken wall in a bathroom. And then I heard it. His voice came over the speakers.

Kellogg.

He knew exactly who I was. Called me his old friend — the frozen TV dinner. Cute. He told me to leave. Said I had guts but I was in over my head in ways I couldn’t possibly understand.

Here’s the thing though. I was frozen for two hundred and ten years. Thawed out for two weeks. And I’d already found him. I wasn’t going anywhere but straight to him. And I think he knew that.

We kept moving deeper into the fort. I lost count of how many synths we took down. It seemed as if Kellogg had brought the entire Institute into that building for protection. Or for something else. He didn’t know I was coming there. But he kept talking. The longer he talked, the more I understood — he wasn’t trying to scare me off. He needed me to not be there. I was interrupting something. Disrupting his plans.

He gave me one more chance to turn around. Told me I had no idea who I’d be facing. He had no idea who he’d be facing either. He thought he knew, but he didn’t. He killed Nora. He took Shaun. There was never a version of this where I turned around. This would only end one of two ways. Me dead, or him.

Last thing he said over the speaker as we approached the area he was holed up in — he told me his synths were standing down. Said we could talk. He sounded almost sad. Tired, maybe. He sighed. Like a man who already knew how this ended and was just delaying it.

The lock disengaged. I told Nick to stay back. This part I needed to do alone. He started to say something, paused, then just nodded. He knew I was right. And I respect him for it.

But before I opened that door, I pulled the pin on a frag grenade. Kept it palmed, spoon down, out of sight.

Here’s the thing about a fight. There’s no right way, no gentleman’s way, no brave way to fight another person, to kill them. A warrior’s pride is a sure-fire way to get killed. Kellogg thought he had control. His pride is what killed him. My only goal when I went in that room was to get information about my son and kill that bastard where he stood. So I carefully held a live grenade by my side and walked in.

Kellogg was there. A few synths stationed around the room. Maybe four or five. He was a man of his word. I’ll give him that much.

We talked. Briefly. He was almost reflective. Said he figured the Institute should’ve finished the job back in the vault. That he would have. He said he regretted the unfortunate event of killing the woman, of leaving me alive — that he’d underestimated what a grieving father could become. Said if I could find him and if I kill him, I might actually stand a chance against the Institute itself.

He wasn’t wrong about that.

He said he didn’t know who he’d been sent to take that day, or why. Just that it was a job.

A job.

At that moment I realized he and I were not that different. He was a soldier with an order. How many families did I tear apart on the various missions I was sent on before the bombs fell? How many children were without fathers because of my orders, my actions? I was not much different than him. We were both just pawns being moved by someone else who was too cowardly to pull the trigger themselves.

Kellogg saw that realization in my eyes. He started to say something.

That’s when I let go of the grenade.

Lobbed it at his feet and opened up on the nearest synth before it even hit the ground. I dove behind a counter by the door and shoved my fingers in my ears and closed my eyes. The world shattered.

Everything after that was just fighting. Synths everywhere. Close quarters. I don’t have a clean tactical breakdown for you. It was loud and it was fast and then it wasn’t.

When the room went quiet, I did a combat walk around the consoles.

Kellogg was on the ground. The grenade had gone off right where he was standing — opened him up badly. He was still alive. Barely. Reaching for something.

His forty-four. It was on the floor near his hand.

I put it in his hand. He tried to raise it, but there wasn’t enough left to make the muscles move properly. I looked into his eyes. Watched him struggle to lift the gun. He so desperately wanted to kill me. I knelt by his side and watched him die.

It took several minutes. He never stopped trying to raise the gun. He never gave up. I guess that’s something.

I want to tell you I felt something. Relief. Satisfaction. Even just rage, finally let out. Something I could point to and say — there. That’s it. That’s what twelve days of this has been for.

I didn’t feel anything.

He just stopped breathing. And I knelt there. And it was over. And there was nothing.

That bothers me more than if I’d felt the rage. At least rage would mean something was still in there. Still working the way it’s supposed to. Nothing. I don’t know what nothing means.

I’m going to have to square up to that. I’m going to have to face the fact that Kellogg and I were one and the same. That we were both being used. At least he wasn’t pretending to be anything noble.

Maybe when I get Shaun back I’ll feel familiar to him. He’s been with Kellogg for some time. And Kellogg said he was older than I’d expect, so he knows Kellogg more than me. I’d already started to suspect that. Doesn’t matter. He’s still my son. I’ll find him. And I will bring him home.

I looted his corpse. At least, what was left of him. Strangely, he had cyber-enhancements. Some type of brain augmentation device, a pain inhibitor implant, and a limb actuator. I took them all, along with his forty-four pistol and twenty-five rounds for it. He had a terminal password in his pocket and I used that to access the main terminal. Unfortunately, it didn’t give up any more information as to where the Institute is or even where to start.

Nick came into the room slowly. He stopped at the door and just looked around slowly. Then looked at me. I just stood up and started walking. He followed.

We walked back to Diamond City together. He didn’t say a word the whole way. And neither did I. I think he knew I needed the quiet.

Nick is a good man. He’s more human than half the people I’ve met since I thawed out.

I got back to the Dugout Inn as the sun was coming up. Sent Dogmeat back to Sanctuary Hills. He wasn’t happy about it. I’ll be back there soon anyway. He needs the rest more than he’ll admit.

And I… I’m exhausted. I’m relieved. And I’m a little lost.

Kellogg’s dead. I’m not. Shaun’s in the Institute — as a prisoner, as a member of their family, I’m not sure yet. I don’t know what the Institute even is at this point.

Tomorrow, I find out.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

DUSTY OUTRO

Hmmmmmm.

I’ve been sitting with this one for a while. Longer than most.

I want to start somewhere unexpected tonight.

PFC Thomas.

A young soldier sneaking food out of a kitchen hatch in the middle of the night for his friends waiting in the dark. A sergeant who caught them and made them pay for it by exercising them for the rest of the night.

Can you even imagine that?

No? Maybe that’s because stealing food today would end with a bullet in your brain. But when Nate was a young soldier, his only punishment was some exercise. Some exercise that was worth it. For the memories.

I know I’ve mentioned this sort of thing on past tapes and I think it bears repeating. Safety.

That story had no business being on this tape tonight. No tactical value. No mission relevance. Nothing to do with Kellogg or the Institute or any of it. And it may just be the most important thing on that tape.

Because it reminded Nate that there was a time when the worst thing that could happen for sneaking — well, stealing — food was a memory.

That man existed. That version of Nate Campbell — young, hungry, laughing in the dark with his friends — he was real. And he’s still in there somewhere.

Now. I’m not going to walk you through Fort Hagan piece by piece tonight. You heard it. You don’t need me to explain it back to you. But there are two moments I need to sit with before I let you go.

The first one.

He put the gun in Kellogg’s dying hand. While he knelt by his side and just watched.

He just watched.

I think you already know what that meant. What that represented.

The second moment.

He felt nothing. Twelve days. Everything he’s been through. Everything it cost him to get to that room. And when it was finally over. Nothing.

Now. I want to be careful here because I think this moment is easy to misread.

That wasn’t emptiness. It wasn’t numbness. It wasn’t Nate losing his humanity.

It was something harder than that.

It was a man who expected the world to feel different when a certain thing was done. And finding out the world doesn’t care for what you want to feel.

Kellogg’s dead. Nora’s dead. Shaun’s still somewhere he can’t reach. That nothing is grief with nowhere left to aim.

I know that feeling. I won’t say more about it.

He said something else on that tape. Said it quietly. Almost to himself. That Kellogg and him weren’t so different. That they were both pawns. Both soldiers with orders. Both doing terrible things for people who stayed safe while others pulled the trigger.

He saw himself in a dying man’s eyes. And then he watched him die anyway.

I’m not going to tell you what that means for Nate Campbell going forward. I don’t have any idea. And I reckon he doesn’t either.

But I will tell you this. It bothered him. Feeling nothing bothered him more than rage would have. That’s the compass that’s still working, sugar. It’s still pointing somewhere true even when the man holding it can’t read the direction yet.

That matters.

Nick. He stepped into that room, stopped. Looked around at all that destruction and death. Looked at Nate. Then walked out of that room and followed him without a word. Didn’t ask. Didn’t push. Just fell into step beside him for the long walk back.

I think I will side with Nate on this one. That synth is more human than not. Nate knows it too. I can hear it in the way he talks about him now.

He sent Dogmeat back to Sanctuary Hills. He’ll head back there soon though. He said so himself.

He’s exhausted. He’s relieved. He’s a little lost. Three honest words from a man who doesn’t waste words.

Tomorrow he finds out what the Institute is.

For those of us that already know, things are about to get interesting. Keep the letters coming in, my little devils. They help keep me going. May your belly be full and your gun aim true.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP16: Distractions

Kellogg is dead. Shaun is still out there. And somehow Nate Campbell spent his first free day fighting through a skyscraper full of super mutants for a man he'd never met.Goodneighbor. A ghoul mayor with a knife. A sniper rifle that feels like an old friend. And a dream Nate really doesn't want to talk about.The Memory Den is next. Whatever's in Kellogg's memories — it leads to the Institute.

DUSTY’S INTRO

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils.

By now you know to find a comfy seat and settle in.. but, Sugar, tonight… Tonight, fables become reality.

Our boy Nate’s on the move again. Meeting new people. Chasing answers. And — apparently — living a fable I didn’t expect.

Now. Years back, somebody passed me a holotape, back when I was brushing up my radioin’ skills. Some half-finished radio drama, never got picked up, never went anywhere. The pitch was a man — an actor, who supposedly — [CHUCKLE] who walked straight into a Super Mutant stronghold… to teach them culture.

Yep! Yer ears a heard that right… Shakespeare, if I ‘member correctly.

I thought it was somebody’s idea of a joke. The kind of story you tell around a fire because it’s funny, because nobody could be THAT stupid… Not the kind of story that you tell because it happened.

Turns out… the joke was on me.

Tonight’s tape has our boy walking right into that story like it’s just another Tuesday. Detours, distractions, and one man from the wasteland I genuinely thought was… made up.

Settle in.

Tape sixteen is now rolling.

NATE’S HOLOTAPE

Log zero-one-six. November sixth, 2287. Hotel Rexford. Goodneighbor.

I need to get this down before I sleep. My brain won’t stop and the only thing that ever quiets it is talking through the day. So I’ll start this recording the same way I started today. With a dream.

I dreamt I was back in Sanctuary Hills. In my old home. Before the bombs. Nora was on the couch watching television and Shaun started crying. I was at the front door, talking with the Vault-Tec salesman. I told him no — Shaun needed me — and he said it was a matter of utmost urgency. But his voice was wrong. Scratchy. Raw. Like he’d smoked a hundred packs a day and chewed razor blades for two hundred years. And I couldn’t see his face. Just a dark smudge where a face should have been.

I walked down the hall to Shaun’s room. Towards his crib. But his room was on fire. He was screaming. I yelled for Nora. For Codsworth. Codsworth was in the kitchen just floating in a circle repeating “two hundred and ten years.” I ran to the kitchen to get help. But the faster I ran toward the kitchen the further away it got.

I fell to my knees. And then Nora was right there. She took my hand. Lifted me up. And said — “we’ll make a new baby.”

I pulled away. I looked up at her.

It wasn’t her.

It was Piper. What the fuck?

I fell out of bed. May have screamed. I honestly don’t know. Nick was pounding on the door before I’d fully registered where I was. Told him I was fine. Composed myself. Opened the door. Walked right past him without a word.

I didn’t have anything to say about it. Still don’t. Not really. What the fuck was that? I’ll come back to that. Maybe.

Spent the day sorting gear and modifying weapons. Added a short barrel to the combat shotgun — more manageable in tight spaces. Checked the forty-four. Inventoried everything. Ate something. Drank water. Basic maintenance to clear my mind.

Then Nick and I went to see Piper Wright at Publick Occurrences. Yep. That Piper. It was late — almost midnight — but she was still at her house. Still working. That tracks with everything I’d observed about her so far. She’s been investigating the Institute for over a year. Everything she’s found, everything she’s dug up using nothing but her paper and her contacts and her refusal to let it go, amounts to almost nothing. They don’t leave tracks. They don’t make mistakes. They just take people. And nobody talks about it because talking about it makes you a target.

And despite that, she’s still publishing. Still pushing. Still making noise in a city that would rather she didn’t.

Nora would have liked her.

She has this way about her. The way she moves through a room. The way she argues a point even when the argument isn’t going her way. The way she uses words the way I use a weapon — targeted, efficient, no wasted motion.

And her eyes.

Something about her eyes caught me off guard. Just for a second. Just long enough to —

I saw something familiar in her eyes. Or I thought I did. I’ve been running on grief and adrenaline for sixteen days. Kellogg is dead and Nora is still gone and my brain is looking for somewhere familiar to land. Something that feels normal. Something safe.

That’s all that was. Grief does that. I know that. I’ve seen it happen to other men after loss. The mind reaches for what it recognizes.

That’s all it was.

Nick cleared his throat. He was looking right at me when I turned in his direction. I felt my face get warm. He’s a synth. He doesn’t even have a throat to clear. So yeah.

Piper was facing the other way. I gathered myself. We got to work.

The Memory Den. There’s a doctor in Goodneighbor — Dr. Amari — who runs a place called the Memory Den. Nick says if we had access to Kellogg’s memories we could find out how to reach the Institute. How to get Shaun back.

The problem is we don’t have his brain. I made sure of that. Emptied a magazine of ten millimeter into his face. I’m thorough if nothing else.

But while I was searching his body, I found some tech. He had enhancements. He was not all human. I dunno. I took them. Not sure why exactly — call it instinct, call it hoping it would be useful, call it carrying something that might give me answers about my son. One of these enhancements was attached to his head. Well, specifically his brain. It still has some grey matter with it. Whether that’s enough for Dr. Amari to work with, we’ll have to find out.

I know how that sounds. I’m filing it under necessary.

I looked over at Piper. Our eyes met. Just for a moment. I could see something. A question maybe. Or maybe something else. Pity. Grief. Concern.

I grabbed Nick’s arm and told him to take me to Goodneighbor, and we left.

We left Diamond City without another word spoken. But I knew Nick had questions. Hell, I had questions.

About thirty minutes into our trip, a distress call came through on my Pip-Boy. Trinity Tower. A man named Rex Goodman. Held at the top by super mutants. Nick and I assessed. We were right at the front door of Trinity Church. The detour would be minimal if we decided to help. Someone needed help, so there wasn’t much discussion about it. We went into the church to make a plan.

But the church was full of super mutants. Of course it was. Four of them and a giant mutant hound. Last frag grenade took care of two instantly. The hound fell through a hole in the floor. The third went down fast. The fourth had a minigun. We dove for cover behind a small wall and I switched to the forty-four. Waited for the overheat. Worked his arm and face. He dropped it eventually.

Then the hound came back up out of the hole and landed on me. Pinned my arm. Reared back. Nick put his forty-four against its head and fired multiple shots.

We’re getting pretty good at this. Combat. Survival. Teamwork. We made a quick plan and headed to the tower.

This was a rescue mission. At least that’s what we hoped it was. Nick brought up the possibility that the recording was just that, and the man was already dead. He said super mutants were not all dumb. He said some of them were pretty smart and that this would make a nice trap.

He was right. This was stupid and reckless. We went in.

The tower itself was floor by floor. Stairs and elevators. More mutants than I expected on every landing. Nick and I fell into a rhythm — calling reloads, covering each other, moving up. Back to back on the tight stairwells. He catches on fast. Faster than most operators I’ve worked with.

Their leader called himself Fist. He was nice enough to introduce himself over the intercom system. Telling us we fight like puny humans. That we would die screaming, or something like that. I wasn’t paying much attention. I had just been through this yesterday. What is it with bad guys taunting me over an intercom system as I make my way through their minions, just to kill them anyway?

Fist was on the top floor. Shocker. He was bigger and stronger than the others. But a Molotov in the face, followed by two very good shooters emptying forty-four rounds into his head, and he went down.

Top floor. Rex Goodman in a cage, alive, but not alone. A super mutant named Strong was in that cage with him. Rex had apparently come to teach the super mutants culture.

Shakespeare. He came to teach them Shakespeare.

Macbeth specifically. I don’t know what to do with that information so I’m just going to record it for the record and keep moving.

We were not expecting to see a super mutant in there with him though. That’s the thing about mission plans, operational orders as they were called when I was a soldier and there was an Army. They are very thorough and take time, sometimes weeks or months to create. When creating an op order, you plan for every contingency, every possibility, because you have loads of intelligence from multiple sources and agencies to work with. But inevitably, even with all that intel, when you execute said plan, unexpected things happen and you have to make decisions on the fly. A good operation order will even plan for that though.

We were not working on a good operations order. We were flying by the seat of our pants this whole night. Operating on guesswork, dumb luck, bad decisions, and excellent aim.

We discussed what to do about the additional hostage. Rex said that Strong was a good chap and could help us escape. He actually used the word “chap” and I almost left them both in that cage right then. But we got them both out. Strong found a pipe rifle and fought his way down with us — useful, if unpredictable. Rex recited Macbeth on the elevator. The whole way down.

Strong asked me to travel with him afterward. Help him find the “milk of human kindness.” I declined. He told me, “Strong no like waiting.” I told him I’d manage.

Rex said he was heading back to WRVR. Back to his old station. His radio career. His cultural mission. I genuinely hope he finds what he’s looking for. Just away from me. Radio DJs are the worst.

Past midnight when we entered and early morning when we got out of that tower. In movies, people fight battles for days without sleep, then go to the bar and get a drink. In reality, moving through a combat scenario on high alert, adrenaline pumping, eyes constantly searching, constantly thinking all night long is exhausting. As we moved through the alleys toward Goodneighbor at a combat pace, I was starting to feel fatigue setting in. Lucky for Nick, he doesn’t have to deal with that. I picked up the pace. I was going to need to rest soon.

Passed Hubris Comics. I used to go there before the bombs. Made a note to go back when I have time.

Swan Pond. Moved fast and quiet. No incidents. I’d like to keep it that way permanently.

Just past there, we took fire from a raider on scaffolding about three hundred meters out. I stopped and drew my pipe rifle with the scope. Drew him out with a round off to the side, then one center mass. Clean shot. Doubt it killed him, but it took the fight out of him long enough for us to get by.

Finally, we made it to Goodneighbor.

Some local tried to shake us down for insurance at the gate. I told him to back off. He did. Then the mayor — a ghoul named Hancock — walked up to that same man and told him he’d been warned. And then without another word put a knife in his gut. Twice. He dropped right there.

Hancock looked at us. Said sorry about that and welcomed us to Goodneighbor. I think I’m going to like this place.

Offloaded supplies at Daisy’s Discounts. Good stock. Fair prices. The whole settlement runs on ghouls. Daisy seemed surprised I didn’t flinch. Said it happens a lot with newcomers. I didn’t tell her I’ve had other things on my mind.

Stopped at the weapons counter on the way to the hotel. That one was run by a “female” Assaultron robot. Weird. She — it, or whatever — had a sniper rifle for sale. I bought it without hesitating. Didn’t negotiate. Didn’t think twice. It felt like finding an old friend. I’ve been collecting .308 rounds in hopes of finding one. This one’s got good bones. I’ll modify it as I can to make her more personable.

Hotel Rexford. Ten caps. A bed. Clair at the desk — not much for conversation. That’s fine. All I really wanted was a quiet space and a bed. I told Nick I needed a few hours of sleep. It’s barely noon, but it’s been a very long thirty plus hours. And now it’s time to get some rest.

I keep coming back to that moment in Piper’s office. Her eyes. I know my mind was just reaching through the grief for something familiar. That’s all it was. All it was.

Sniper rifle’s on the bed, next to me. Cleaned, oiled. Loaded. Ready.

Later tonight. Dr. Amari. The Memory Den. Kellogg’s memories. A way to the Institute. A way to Shaun. That’s what matters. That’s the only thing that matters.

This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell. Out.

 

DUSTY’S OUTRO

Well. That was something.

Before I get going, I owe ol’ Rex Goodman an apology.

Wherever he is right now — probably a skeleton behind the desk, died mid-monologue to an audience of nobody — whatever. I owe that man an apology.

For years I thought he made that whole thing up. The radio drama nobody picked up. The actor who was brave enough — or without any kind of sense at all — to walk straight into a super mutant stronghold. Alone. To teach them culture. I figured it was exactly what it sounded like. A man with a big personality and an even bigger need to be the center of every story he told.

I’ve known plenty like that. Pompous. Self-important. The kind of fella who’d call a super mutant a “good chap” without a hint of irony.

Sound familiar?

Apparently that part of the story — the legend — wasn’t an exaggeration either. He really did walk in there. He really was caged with an actual super mutant. And somebody really did fight through that entire tower to get him out. Somebody he didn’t know and had never met until that night.

We’ve spent sixteen tapes listening to Nate Campbell become something. A soldier who buried a wife under a tree. A leader the Minutemen are quietly rebuilding themselves around without him even noticing it’s happening. A man who walked into a hardware store because somebody said they needed help.

And now apparently, a legend in his own right. Nate Campbell — our Nate — is the man who actually pulled off the impossible story I dismissed as just a tall tale.

I honestly don’t know what to do with that, sugar. I really don’t. Except note it. And let it sit there. Because I got a feeling this ain’t the last tall tale that’ll turn out to have his fingerprints all over it.

Now. I’m not going to walk you through this whole tape piece by piece. You heard it, same as me. But I’d be doing a disservice to y’all if I didn’t say nothing about that dream. You heard it. You heard him say he dreamt about Piper. You heard him circle around something and pull back before he could say what it was. What we all know it to be.

So I’ll let you sit with that one yourselves.

But sugar, I’ve got to talk about the Deathclaw in the room, if you will. The one thing Nate said on this tape that is just unforgivable. Sadistic even. A side of Nate that is so ugly, so mean and terrible, that I may just have to stop this whole project right here and now.

“Radio DJs are the worst.”

Excuse me?

I’ve been broadcasting these tapes — your tapes, Nate, in case you forgot — out of the goodness of my heart and a genuine belief that your story matters. And this is the thanks I get?

I’m hurt, sugar. Truly hurt. Deeply and forever scarred.

Naw. You have to have feelings in order to hurt ’em.

That sniper rifle on the bed next to him though. That was not a small thing. He even gave it a gender. Said he’d make her more personable. Her. That’s not nothing, honey. That’s a warrior who found a weapon. The weapon. Said it was like finding an old friend. I am really looking forward to hearing how well he can use that rifle. He mentioned in the past that he was a trained sniper. I’m not sure how you train to be a sniper other than shoot things from a distance, but it’s pretty apparent that this man has had some serious combat training in his past. So I for one am excited for her introduction to the wasteland.

The courier network’s been steady lately. Letters coming in. I read every one. If something on this tape landed with you tonight — write in. The courier network runs in all directions.

Tomorrow night Nate goes to the Memory Den. Whatever’s waiting in Kellogg’s memory, I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot.

Get some rest, my little devils. And remember to keep yer boots dry and yer belly full.

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive. Stay strange.

Dusty out.

EP17: Memories

Nate Campbell climbed into a dead man's memories today. What he found wasn't just a monster.It was a man who loved his family. Lost them. And made a choice about what to do with that loss — and kept making it until it was the only thing left of him.Sound familiar?The Glowing Sea is next. Shaun is closer than ever.

DUSTY’S INTRO

Welcome back to the Dusty Signal, my little devils. I’m glad you keep finding the signal out there in the static of a broken world.

Today, Nate does somethin’… crazy. Today… Nate enters the mind of a dead man in search of answers. Now, I have heard of people going to some pretty great lengths for answers… but Sugar, Nate Campbell is NOT most people. Not our boy. Not ‘ole Nate.

Nate doesn’t just ask questions, he doesn’t just look for clues… HE climbs into the head of a dead man… HE walks through their memories… He GETS answers.

How far would YOU go for answers?

Hmmmmmpppphhh… Tape seventeen is now live.

NATE’S HOLOTAPE

Log zero, one, seven. November seventh. Twenty-two eighty-seven. Hotel Rexford, again. I got a different room. Some guy approached me on the way to my old room. His name was Rufus. Said he wanted me to run an errand for him. Smash and grab job. Said he thought I looked like the kind of guy that could “get the job done.” I declined and waited for him to leave the area. Then… I got another room. Just what kind of vibes am I putting out?!? Apparently, the kind that makes a stranger think I’m a criminal… my old sniper instructor, Sergeant Hayes, used to always say, “the world will only see what you show it.” I need to be better about what I’m showing the world moving forward… a criminal is not it. It’s after midnight… Well, early morning. I suppose that’s more accurate. I need to sleep. But first… I need to get this down. Strangest thing… I ran into the Vault-Tec salesman this morning. Coming out of my room. He’s a ghoul now. Two hundred and ten years… and he’s still alive. He was… not happy about it. Said it wasn’t fair that I looked the same. Fair?!?   I asked him if it was fair that my wife was murdered while I was frozen six feet away. If it was fair that my son was taken while I couldn’t move. If it was fair that Vault-Tec froze us all with the intent of never letting us out… He got quiet after that.  He claimed he didn’t know anything about the experiments. About any of it. I already knew that — he was planted in Sanctuary Hills by my handlers after all. Just a salesman doing his job. Doing what he was told.   I looked him in the eyes and asked him one more thing. Whether it was fair that the company he worked for locked him out of the very vault he was sent to fill.  He cried.   I sent him to Sanctuary Hills. Told him to find Preston Garvey and tell him I sent him. Promised I’d visit… He asked me twice to confirm. Made sure I meant it.   I meant it. He was practically running down the hall…  I didn’t ask his name. I walked away and realized halfway down the hall that I never even asked for his name… I’ll fix that when I visit.   Nick seemed to like that little exchange with the salesman, and asked if we could talk for a minute. He told me how he made it to Diamond City. How hard it was for him to be accepted there. How he rescued the mayor’s daughter and the mayor let him stay as a result. That he also had felt like an outsider… just like the salesman..  He didn’t have to tell me any of that. All he’s seen of me is the worst of me — the vault, the cold efficiency, the way I treated him on the way out of Vault 114. And here he is just… opening up. Unpacking himself. Trusting me with something real. Being… oddly vulnerable…  That’s how trust is built. Not declared… Built. —  I’ll honor it.   Hancock was giving a speech on our way to the Memory Den. Standing on his balcony, addressing whoever would listen. Telling them to watch for synths. That if someone starts acting differently — stops drinking, stops their usual patterns — to report it… Whatever Hancock is… he leads. People listen. In this world that’s not nothing. We walked over to The Memory Den after the speech was finished.   Dr. Amari wasn’t optimistic when I handed her the bag… The piece I’d taken from Kellogg’s skull — the hippocampus with the circuitry still attached. She said she needed a functioning brain. I told her to work with what we had.  She said she could make it work, but would need to use both of us. I looked at Nick, and he was already climbing into a pod.  She wired him in first, just to see if he could do it alone. The Institute tech interfaced quickly — apparently they all run on the same architecture, but there was a failsafe and Nick couldn’t access the memories alone. She said if she put us both in the system simultaneously we might be able to break through it together… I told her to load me in and climbed into the other pod.   That was not an easy thing for me to do… climb into another pod and trust a stranger that it was what they claimed it was… but, Nick trusted her and that was good enough for me. A few clicks and beeps… and…  I was in his head.   His memories. Not mine…. His…. Fucking weird… The first one — he was a child. Small room. His mother was listening to the radio. His father was drunk, yelling to turn it off, heading out. His mother pressed a gun into his hands. Told him he was the protector now.  He was maybe eight years old.   I kept moving… The next one — he had a family. A wife… Sarah. A baby girl named Mary. He was in the kitchen trying to reassure her. Said he’d found work with the Shee. Said he’d have his own crew one day. The baby was crying and he went to her.  He… he loved them. Whatever he became after — in that memory, he loved them… completely.   

 

Then, something happened to them. The memory was fragmented. A voice saying they died like dogs. Him not being there to save them.  I kept moving.  Next one… a bar in some city. Men approaching him with a job. They wanted him to kill a family.   He didn’t even hesitate… He traveled east after that. Town to town. Killing for money. Guilt converting to anger converting to purpose… The way it does.  I kept moving.   In one memory, he was talking to a woman… she was from the Institute. She called him disruptive. He told her to hire him. She sent three synths at him and he dropped all three in seconds… She was impressed… That’s when it started. The Commonwealth. The Institute. Everything he could want in exchange for everything they needed done.   And then…. I found myself in the one memory that I both couldn’t leave and didn’t want to be in… all at once.   Vault 111. I was back there. Right there. Watching it happen… again. From his side of the glass this time.   He said he never knew why they weren’t supposed to refreeze everyone. Said the old man — whoever that is — only wanted me kept frozen. Everyone else was just… loose ends. They suffocated them in their pods. Refroze me. I can only imagine the fear… the sheer panic they had. Pounding on the glass. Terrified. Confused. Not understanding why as the oxygen just stopped coming.  What an ugly way to die.   Kellogg said he figured they should have killed me too. Said he was sure he could handle a softy pre-war grieving father. But, “the old man” said no. Whoever that sick fuck is… he’s due a visit from me. I’m going to put a forty-four round through his skull. I stayed in this memory… watched it all happen… over and over again. I wanted to remember every single detail.   Dr. Amari was telling me to move on. Said my vitals were spiking. I watched him shoot her.   I watched it again.   And again.   She fought them. She wouldn’t give them Shaun. She held on as long as she could. He shot her. He said he was glad he didn’t have to kill the kid. Said he never liked doing that… not that he wouldn’t do it… just didn’t like it.   He said he didn’t know who he was grabbing or why. Just that it was a job. He was sent to do a job. A job.  Just following orders.  I’ve also said those words. Not those exactly. But close enough…. I’ve followed orders. I’ve been given missions… Mission comes first. You don’t ask why. You execute. You trust that the people giving the orders have the full picture and you don’t.   I’ve been in rooms. Done things. Made calls that probably destroyed families. Killed men and women that may have had children… And told myself it was different because we were the good guys. Because the mission mattered. Because someone with more information than me decided it was necessary.

How many kids grew up without parents because of my trigger finger?   I know the answer I want to give. That it WAS different. That MY targets WERE different. That the cause was just and Kellogg’s wasn’t… But… I’m not sure I believe that right now. The whole world ended anyway… what does it matter now?   I moved on to the next one… I had to or I never would. Kellogg’s house in Diamond City… Shaun was there.  Ten years old. Reading Grognak the Barbarian comics on the floor.   That’s my boy.. At least he has his father’s taste in reading material. Kellogg thought it was a bad idea to be there. But the old man wanted it. And Kellogg… he kind of liked it. Living like that. A kid in the house. Something resembling normal.  He was enjoying it.   I don’t know what to do with that… He was a monster, a killer… an asshole. But, he was a just a man. I suppose we all have more to us than we show… right Sergeant Hayes?

 An Institute courser appeared out of nowhere… just appeared in the room with them. Told Kellogg a doctor had gone rogue — Brian Virgil — and was hiding somewhere in the Glowing Sea. They needed him eliminated.   Kellogg knew they were using him and Shaun as bait for me. The radio was running Piper’s story about the Mayor. Which means I’d just missed them by days. Maybe less… He took Shaun back with him. Not through a door. He told Shaun to stand next to him. Said he was ready to relay.   A few flashes. And they were gone.   Dr. Amari pulled me out. Said the Glowing Sea is essentially uninhabitable. Said if I was going in I’d need power armor or a sealed radiation suit, and all the RadAway and RadX I could carry… Nick was already upstairs. She’d pulled him out already. I took a minute to get my bearings back and went upstairs.   When I walked up to him something was wrong. His voice changed… It was Kellogg’s voice that came out of him. Telling me he hoped I found what I was looking for. That he should have killed me in the vault.   I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at Nick. His eyes flashed and then he looked at me with concern. I had my hand on my pistol… I asked him why the fuck Kellogg was talking through him. Nick said he didn’t know what I was talking about. I started to pull the pistol. He put his hands up and said he felt fine and had no idea what I was talking about. Said maybe it was a residual memory… I slid the pistol back and told him to head back to Diamond City. Told him there was something wrong with him and we needed to go separate ways. I could barely look at him. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him either.   He was… gracious about it. Said the memories were hard on both of us. That he’d be in Diamond City when I cooled off and needed his help again. Then, he walked out the door… I felt like an ass before I even made it to the hotel.   He’s probably right. About all of it… I mean, he has done nothing but help me and I’ve done nothing but question his loyalty, treat him like a pack mule, and bark orders at him… That doesn’t make the voice I heard any less real though.   I have a lot to work through tonight before I can sleep… The Glowing Sea. Power armor at Forward Base Alpha — needs repair. Preston might know where to find a radiation suit. Tenpines needs a check-in. And somewhere in all of that I need to figure out what I’m actually going to do when I get to the Glowing Sea and find this doctor… and, how the hell is that doctor surviving there? I need a plan. A real one. Not guesswork and excellent aim. Just following orders.   I keep coming back to that… Kellogg and I were both pointed at targets by people with more information than us… and told to execute. The difference between us is supposed to be the cause. The justification. The side we were on.   I believed that then. I’m less sure about it now… I’ll figure it out though. I always do. The mission doesn’t stop because the man running it gets uncomfortable with himself… Shaun is still in the Institute. That’s what I know. That’s what I hold onto.   I’m going to find him. I’m going to kill “the old man”… and I’m going to bring Shaun home.   This is Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Campbell.   Out. 



DUSTY’S OUTRO

Hm..

That one’s going to sit with me for a while.

Let me start with something that most people probably walked right past on that tape.

The salesman.

Two hundred and ten years of being a ghoul — alone, disfigured, locked out of the very vault he was sent to fill by the very company he trusted — and the first thing out of his mouth when he sees Nate is… that it isn’t fair.

And Nate… Nate asked him the right question.

“Was it fair for you to be locked out of that vault by the very company you were working for?”

He cried.

I’ve seen a lot of people break down in my time. Some of them deserved it. Some of them didn’t. But there’s a particular kind of cry that comes out of a person when somebody finally — finally — asks the question they’ve been carrying alone for too long… That’s what happened in that hallway.

And Nate sent him to Sanctuary Hills. Made him a promise. Twice confirmed it.

But… didn’t ask the man’s name… He caught that himself. Said he’d fix it when he visited.

I believe him… do you?

Now. The Memory Den.

I want to talk about what it actually means to walk through another person’s memories. Now, you may not know what that’s like… but I do sugar. I’ll leave the technology bits to Dr. Amari, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that. But what it means for the person doing the walking, that… that, I do know about.

You don’t just see what they saw. You FEEL what they felt. The love they had. The guilt they carried. The moment everything went wrong and the choice they made afterward… Nate walked through a killer’s entire life in the span of… well…  however long Dr. Amari had him in that pod. And what he found wasn’t just a monster…. He found a man.

A man who loved his family completely. Who lost them. Who made a choice about what to do with that loss and kept making that choice for the rest of his life until it was the only thing left of him… Sound familiar? Now. I want to be careful here. Because what I’m about to say is not an excuse for anything Kellogg did. He made his choices. He lived by them… and, he died by them.

But Nate said something on that tape that I don’t think he fully understood the scope of. “Just following orders.” I’ve seen what happens when people follow orders without question… I’ve seen what it costs. What it takes from a person. What it leaves behind… I have also seen what happens when people don’t follow them. When someone decides on their own that they know better — that their judgment supersedes the chain of command — and acts on it. That’s not pretty either.

Here is the truth about orders sugar. The hard truth. The one nobody talks about around the fire because it’s too uncomfortable to sit with. A soldier who follows orders without question is dangerous. And a soldier who questions every order is useless. The truth lives somewhere in the middle and nobody — nobody — gets to stand there cleanly.

Not Kellogg… and not Nate. The scars of violence may heal on the surface… but that damage runs deep. Nate looked into that dying man’s eyes and saw himself looking back. Not completely. Not exactly. But enough… Enough to ask the question he’d been avoiding for days.

How many families? What kind of lasting pain did he cause… just “following orders?”

I don’t have an answer for him. Nobody does. And that’s the hardest part — there is no real resolution to THAT question. Not if YOU have a soul… You just live with it…. Bury it.

He’s deciding, right now, what to do with that realization.

That’s not nothing sugar. Most people never get that far. Most people bury it so deep they forget it’s there until it surfaces at the worst possible moment.

Nate’s looking right at it… facing it head on. That takes more courage than anything he did in that vault or that tower. At least Nate and Kellogg chose to follow their orders.

Because I know something about following orders you didn’t choose to follow.

About being put in situations where the options were do this… or something worse happens. Where the person giving the order had more power than you and you were young enough and scared enough that you did what you were told…

And I know what it’s like to carry that… to keep carrying it.

Because that’s what you do when there’s nowhere to put it down.

Nate put Kellogg’s memories down when he walked out of that pod. He had to — Dr. Amari made him. But his own memories… his own orders… his own trigger finger…

Those came with him.

And, when Nate made it back in his hotel room he sat with all of it.

I hope he slept.

One more thing before I let you go.

Nick Valentine spoke in Kellogg’s voice and Nate nearly drew on him.

And then Nick — who has every reason in the world to be done with Nate Campbell — told him he’d be in Diamond City when he cooled off and needed help.

I swear, a heartbeat isn’t required for grace… Nick proves that, time and again.

Nate knows he was wrong. Said so himself before he even made it back to the hotel… That’s his compass still working. Even through the fog and pain.. Nate’s trying hard to stay on a good path.. To make that world a better place. But…. I’m not so sure the world wants to be a better place.

Ya know one way to show ‘ole Dusty that the world wants to be better? Write in and let me know how you are making a difference… The courier network’s there when you want to use it… and your letters always find me. Keep sending ’em in… besides, how else will old Gee male stay out of them bars?

Next tape… Nate heads back to Sanctuary Hills to begin planning for a trip to the Glowing Sea.

I hope he packs his Atomic Sunscreen…

May you always find shelter from the rad storms of your future sugar…

Stay close to the signal.

Stay alive…

Stay strange.

Dusty. Out.

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