Bethesda Thing

It was just routine now. Every three days, he'd leave the relative shelter of the drainage chamber to scavenge. He wondered how much longer he'd be able to rely on this town for supplies as he crawled out of the pipe. He grabbed his rifle and looked around before standing up and heading towards the town.
Gunshots echoed the streets as he walked past already looted buildings. Moving quietly, he slipped up the street until the combatants came into view. From here, it looked like a group of raiders from the area had a small band of survivors pinned down. Most were against the wall of a building, but a pair were behind an old vehicle.
He turned to the right, spotting a pair of raiders that were trying to flank the group.
Without hesitation he lifted his rifle and aimed down the sight. He pulled the trigger and one of the raiders fell. The other looked around before a second shot hit him in the head.
The group spotted their apparent savior and waved him over. Lowering his rifle, he ran up the block to the shelter of the building. He joined the five and leaned against the wall as the two behind the car exchanged rounds with the raiders.
The elder of the three women in the group turned to him. "Thanks for the help, stranger. But this isn't the time to chat. Could you help us clear these guys out of here?"
He nodded as he replaced the two rounds in his lever-action rifle. "No problem."
A brief fire fight ensued. The raiders lost a few more of their men before the rest ran away. The two behind the car regrouped with the rest and met the new man.
"You showed up just in time, thanks. I'm John Madison. I used to be a Naval Officer, so the others call me Cap or Captain."
"Nick Montgomery. Nice to meet you."
"You're pretty handy with that rifle. We could use you, if you're up for it."
"I think I'll stick on my own for now."
"Well, if you change your mind, we're going to be in this area for a while. There's an old military base just outside the town that might not have been hit. We're on our way to see if there's anything useful. You're welcome to join us, even if it's just until we leave."
"I'll consider it. Thanks."
Nick parted from the group as they head in the direction of the military base. He scavenged the town for a bit before deciding to check out the base they were headed to. After following the remains of the road, Nick arrived at the base and is met by the group, who are just outside of it. John moved to greet him.
"Good to see you. We looked over the base. It looks like it wasn't hit directly, but there's some structural damage to one of the walls."
"Shouldn't be a big deal."
"Find anything useful inside?"
"Nothing we can use, but we did find out what this base was used for. It was an old ELF station."
"Elf station? Like what, Santa's elves?"
"No, no. ELF stands for extremely low frequency. The military used these bases to keep in contact with submarines around the world. Well, sort of. They can only transmit one way. But if we could get a signal out, we might be able to see if there's anyone else out there."
"I'm guessing it doesn't work, or you would have done that already."
"Got that right. There's a General Atomics nuclear power supply, but it'll take our engineer some time to fix. Maybe you can help him, if you can. He should be inside. Otherwise, it looks like most everything could work, but some of the cables in the relay are cut or snapped. If we could find some more copper wire, we could probably splice them together. I'm going to make sure there aren't any more raiders around. Why don't you go talk to our mechanic?"
"Sure. Good luck on the patrol."
Nick walked past where the Captain stood as he moved to start his patrol. He entered the base and finds the mechanic working on fixing the power supply.
"Hey, uh. John told me to talk to you about getting this place up and running."
"Did he? Great. I don't need anything right now, but if you wanted to try and get those cables fixed, that'd help. Before we got ambushed, I saw a poster for the new Mr. Handy models arriving in that Super-Duper Mart in town. If they're still there, you should be able to get the wiring from inside... assuming they're still in one piece."
"It's worth a shot. I'll go check them out." Nick left the mechanic to his work as he exited the base. He stopped by the rest of the group near the gate before he went back to town. “I’m going into town to look for parts. Does anyone need anything important?”
A women about forty answered him, “Ben has a heart condition. It’s nothing too serious, but medication would really help him. You can probably find it in that pharmacy I saw next to the Super-Duper Mart.”
“Alright, I’ll see if I can find it.” The woman told him the name of the drug, and with no further requests, he headed into town.
Nick arrived at the Super-Duper Mart after a short time and entered the building. The shelves were nearly completely bare. Food, drinks, anything one might deem useful had long since been taken. He moved through the store, making his way to the Mr. Handy display in the rear. Sure enough, several were missing, and the rest looked damaged. He checked the back room, which revealed a smaller cache of robots. These ones, however, were actually salvageable.
After opening the robots up and ripping out the wiring and a few other items, Nick made his way out of the store. He quickly crossed the street and entered the pharmacy. Like the Super-Duper Mart, the shelves were basically empty. Moving to the back of the store, he quickly located the locked store room of medicine. Using a bobby pin and a screwdriver, he picked the lock and gained access to the medical supplies. Nick grabbed as much as he could. Stimpaks, Rad-X, Radaway, Buffout, Med-X, anything he got his hands on. He found the drugs the group needed as well and added them to his pack.
He made his way back to the group and delivered the medicine to the woman. She thanked him before he goes to fix the wiring on the relays. Walking the two miles and back, checking for broken wiring and repairing it took time. Nick repeated the process with the other relay. He then made his way back to the group to find John has returned from his patrol.
"Did you get those relays fixed?"
"Yep. They should be good to go when the power's back on."
"About that.. The base must have been hit harder than we thought. Everyone up here's fine, but the radiation got to Ben inside. We don't know how bad it is, but we probably shouldn't risk going back in."
"I found some Rad-X and Radaway in town. I could probably finish the repairs and get this thing going."
"You really think you can? Alright, just don't throw your life away too. You start feeling your skin peel off, you take that Radaway and get the hell out."
"Don't have to tell me twice."
Nick took one of the Rad-X and headed into the base. He went back to the power supply and started working. It didn't take long to finish Ben's repair work. He tried to turn it on, but it still didn't work. Thinking quickly, he took a fusion battery he took from one of the Mr. Handy's and hooked it up to the controls. He turned it on again, and this time the power from the battery is just enough to get it started.
Nick headed back outside and returned to the group before he went over to talk to John. "I got it up and running. Now what?"
"Well, now we need to find the code book and send out the code to for the subs to make contact with us."
"Where do we find that?"
"There should be a code book somewhere in the base. Who knows where it could be now?"
"I'll go back in and try and find it. Shouldn't be too hard, right?"
That said, Nick went back to the base and started looking. After checking every desk drawer and filling cabinet, he located a copy of the code book. Quickly skimming through, he found several codes that he could have sent out. One of the codes he considered would tell the submarines not to make contact and remain submerged. He did, however, find the breach and contact code before going over to the controls. He put in the correct code then made his way back to the group.
"I found the code book and sent the code for them to make contact out."
"Great work, Nick. Now, the relays take about 15 minutes to send each letter of the code, so we got some time. We're going to bring the radio equipment back up here and get it working for when they answer. It might take a while for anyone to get into radio range, so why don't you check back in a day or so?"
"Sounds good to me. Best of luck."
Nick returned to his hideout with his supplies. He waited there for a day or so before he ventured back to the base and talked to John and the group. "Hear anything back?"
"We just did, actually. There's a sub that ported on the coast about one hundred miles from where Seattle was. They've had the communication equipment running for some time, just in case something like this would happen."
"That's great. So what do you plan on doing now?"
"We're going to go hook up with them. Odds are better with a larger group. We might even restart society on the way."
John laughed before he continued, "Thanks for your help with this. You sure you still don't wanna come with us?"
"I'm sure. Don't have too much fun without me."
"We'll try not to. Take care." With that, the group says its goodbyes and parts with Nick, headed for the coast.