The rest of the ride to the construction site was mostly uneventful, but it seemed like even more cultists were in the area now than there were before. It was clear now to Adam that Pestilence had the intention of controlling the East now that Famine was dealt with, which would mean they controlled the South and the East. Undoubtedly they would be trying to control the north if the north was not just Lake Michigan.
Regardless, just as it was before, due to the APC's speed and size they were entirely left alone on their journey. The big guns on the car probably helped in intimidation too. Though Adam was completely out of ammo now, he really needed to go visit Jay again and see if he had managed to get a hold of ammo for any of his guns, but the time to go to Midway was not now. He would do a big trip there when he had a few errands to run, he was content to let this issue lie for the moment. After all, what were the chances he would need a 105mm cannon shell in between then and now.
Regardless, they arrived at the construction site in short order. It was clearly the site of what was supposed to be a skyscraper, judging by the construction equipment lying about, the pallets filled with construction materials and the small army of dead construction protectrons. Wait… dead? This did not bode well.
"Deccanus…" Adam said slowly as Deccanus emerged from the APC behind him.
"I see, there is likely something here…" He said with a cautious tone.
"How the hell is my luck like this?" Adam said with moderate frustration as he opened the back ramp to let Rae out, who was humming a tune to themselves as they emerged.
"You attract chaos, it is your curse." Deccanus said, perhaps joking.
"I'm being serious."
"So am I." Deccanus said before they could hear the sounds of the dirt moving. Oh god, if it's radscorpions again he might shoot someone… probably radscorpions but he would be very unhappy about it.
However his luck seemed to be turning itself around, at least a little bit, as rather than radscorpions, weird hairless rats with giant buck teeth and pink skin began to pop out of the dirt intent on tearing apart the intruders. They were the size of a beagle each, and they looked oddly familiar to Adam but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Mole Rats." Deccanus said as he casually drew his machete with a serious expression.
"Mole rats?! These things?" Adam said incredulously. He did not have a clear idea of what molerats looked like but this was not it. Maybe hairless molerats but even then these things were huge and not normal looking. Ultimately though his shock was temporary, he was getting used to old world animals being horrifying versions of themselves by now so he decided to let the matter drop.
"Are they tough?" Adam asked as he then turned to see Deccanus decapitate one rather easily as it lunged at him midair.
"No. They are simple prey." Deccanus said as he stood his ground, not at all bothered by the numerous mole rats gathered in the area.
Rae was already laying down laser fire on the mole rats, killing them simply. It seemed as though he was worried for nothing.
Adam was relieved to see they were not a massive threat, they still looked dangerous, no doubt, but considering the sorts of threats he had been up against recently, a simple enemy that was a low threat was a welcome change of pace. So, with his anxiety down he pulled out his laser rifle from his backpack and began to lay into the molerats with reckless abandon.
All in all the entire fight was over in 2 minutes, the killed probably 20 mole rats with only one or two close calls. Rae was bit but it was in the chassis and the damage was superficial, Adam was almost bit but was saved from the indignity by Deccanus, and Deccanus never once came close to being in danger.
"Are these um… worth anything?" Adam asked, curious as he looked upon the bodies of the mole rats.
"They have very little monetary value." Deccanus said as he began to carve up the molerat despite his words. "However the meat is a fine source of protein, since we are the providers of food for the Vault I suggest we take as much back as we can." Adam nodded.
"Good thinking, I'll leave you to it then." Adam knew food was running somewhat low in the Vault. Nowhere near low enough to be a concern but since they were not producing food and the former refugees only brought whatever food they could carry with them it meant stocks were limited since the Vault had no food to speak of. Those who returned to Naper and then came back did bring with them a large amount of food, but ultimately they needed to find a way to get more food. He might need to make a run to Midway or Naper to buy a lot of food wholesale. In retrospect he wished he had not sold all the food he had to Midway but at the time housing a small community's worth of people in the Vault was not on his bingo card. Regardless these were issues to be solved in the future for now he focused on the task.
Adam lucked out. The construction site had multiple pallets full of bags of concrete ready to be mixed with water as well as a whole concrete mixer.
"Rae." Adam called out.
"Yes, Sergeant?" Rae said happily as they came over.
"Carry all of those bags of concrete and the concrete mixer into the back of the APC, I'm going to look around a bit more."
"Right away sir!" Rae said with a soft salute before rolling off to do as instructed.
Adam turned to look at one of the dead construction protectrons and knelt next to it. Even at a glance it was clearly destroyed beyond fixing. It had a number of holes exposing key circuitry, rust covering its entire body and it looked like no amount of fixing on his part could bring it back to working order. As Adam walked around the same seemed to be true of all the protectrons here. None were salvageable in any way, which was a great shame, but nothing could be done about it.
However the construction equipment and vehicles on the other hand seemed to be not entirely hopeless. Of course repairing one of them was too monumental of a task for Adam who walked into this situation unprepared. Even if he could, he had no need for any of them so it was a moot point. However, each one of them had some still usable parts he could scavenge. So, with a bit of time and effort, he collected all the parts from each one he found that he thought might be useful. Whether they would be useful in the APC or the Vault it did not matter. He also found another one of the parts needed for the Reactor too so this was definitely worth his time.
However after spending a bit of time doing this it seemed like everyone was wrapping up their work so Adam decided to scale the exposed flooring of the half built building to see if he could get a lay of the land around this area. This was an area he knew little about because it was firmly under famine's control until recently. And good thing he did too.
In the distance, not too far away was a highway suspended in the air with heavy solid concrete pillars that allowed it to stand hundreds of feet upwards. Part of the highway was destroyed, specifically one of the offramps, however onramp and the main part of the highway were mostly intact. None of those were the interesting part, however. What was interesting was what he saw on the highway.
Ghouls, lots of them. But not ferals, no, these were regular ghouls, and they were living up there in makeshift houses. There was a community right nearby!