The Holotape Archive

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 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.