"Whew..... ...... "The sound of low breathing from the gas mask is very obvious in the quiet place, and after walking for a distance, the ground becomes dry, and the stagnant water does not accumulate deep in this place, and the forks on the left and right sides are not like this, so Andy still chooses to take the middle one, and the rats are basically gushing out from here.

Everywhere there were signs of collapse and cracks oozing foul liquid. Staring at the unfathomable dark corridor ahead, Andy had a question in his heart, why would these rats be in a hurry to leave the sewers?

Is it just because they suddenly multiplied explosively? No.... Judging from the cannibalism of the rats that did not hesitate in the past, once they reproduce too much, they will spontaneously start to suppress the population, and it is not in their nature to leave their familiar environment and go to the surface to conflict with humans.

These mutant rats are a bit of an anomaly. A whole bunch of blockages appeared in front. Andy lifted the beep boy and took a photo, these should be all kinds of garbage washed down from the surface, some broken bricks, rotten wood, rags and nets.... Since before the war, garbage has never been properly disposed of, silting up in sewers, blocking sewage and creating a relatively dry area.

He kicked it twice and saw the reflection of metal in the garbage heap, and after a few strokes with his foot, something slipped out of the garbage heap, which really looked like a rusty submachine gun wrapped in dirt.

On closer inspection, there were still some skeletons and armor scattered around the rusty iron bump. Andy observed for a moment, convinced that this was a heavily armed pre-war man, that too much time had passed, and that in this harsh environment, all the military equipment had been completely destroyed, and even the bones of the dead were about to be melted clean.

It was not uncommon for the sewers to have the bones of pre-war people, and the outbreak of the war was too hasty for the safe house plan to be fully implemented, and even if all the 300 shelters planned in the early days were built, it would never be possible to accommodate all the SA people, but only a small part of them, not to mention that the plans for those shelters remained on paper until 2077.

The underground sewage facility is a natural shelter, and even if it cannot block the infiltration of radioactive materials, it can still hide in it to avoid the frontal impact of the first shock wave after the explosion of the nuclear bomb.

Since then, many survivors have died underground from disease, starvation, injury, radiation, and other factors.

I'm afraid this is one of them.

"There are enemies~" Hull's voice sounded from the back of his neck, although Andy squatted in place and did not move, he immediately turned on the V mode to search for enemies, and the perspective instantly turned behind him, and a long strip of things was marked by the beep boy with a green outline, and it was trying to use the sewage to quietly approach behind it, the purpose of course was to launch a surprise attack.

A shocking gunshot rang out into the distance, and a large black worm about the size of a human leg sprang out of the sewage.

"Leeches...."Andy looked at the worm rolling on the ground, and he knew where the bottom of the Jericho Water Plant was connected, and the leeches below were swimming through the underground water channel into the bottom of the water plant.

A shrill creak came from ahead. Before he had time to think about it, Andy rushed to the garbage heap in three steps and two steps, then grabbed the top pipe and hoisted himself in the air.

The rats rushed out of the garbage heap in two ways, they seemed to be fleeing in a hurry, some of the rats panicked and crashed into the wall and flew into the sewage without a trace, and some of the rats jumped around, and even flew to Andy, who was hanging in the air, and were kicked away by him.

Andy looked deep through the garbage heap from a high place, the water behind the garbage heap became very deep, and the rats were afraid of what was in the water, and those who wriggled out of the water once they adhered to the rats could not break free in any way were the huge mutated leeches, these leeches longed for the warm blood inside the rats' bodies, leaving behind all the rats that had been sucked into jerky.

Swarms of leeches wriggle and crawl through garbage heaps, but they move unusually slowly in places where water is scarce, so it's no wonder rats like to congregate in relatively dry places.

"Turn on stealth mode." With a flash in front of him, he could no longer see his hand when he raised his hand again, and the whole person became invisible, Andy thought about it, grabbed his body with his backhand and shook his body to the top of the corridor, and then grabbed the top of the pipe and crawled on top like a spider, avoiding the monsters that were surging below.

After crawling for about ten minutes, without much effort, the Hermes armor cleverly changed the surface structure of the hands and legs, greatly increasing the friction, and even relying on magnetic adsorption when encountering metal parts, with the help of this, although Andy has no stealth skills, it is not a problem to continue crawling with his innate high endurance.

At the end of the channel is a cross-channel with four channels in each of the four directions, one of which is the driest but appears to have been structurally damaged and somewhat deformed.

There are many mutant leeches swimming slowly in the water, or gathering on the carcasses of rats to suck blood, or slowly looking for their next prey, they are like thick black lines shaking their heads and tails in the sewage, and it makes people feel their hairs stand on end.

Jumping lightly to the drier waterway, Andy was surprised by the sound of landing. Walking cautiously inside, the collapsed pieces had killed many rats, the corpses had rotted and deteriorated, and the smell of sewage mixed with the sewer gave off an unbearable stench.

After walking for a while, Andy saw something unusual.

".........." He stared at the thing for a moment, and was sure that it was a human thigh, and the remaining fragments of pants on it were quite new, and the color was very similar to the uniform worn by the Jericho Town police, and it had been gnawed to reveal large white bones, which were now half-soaked in black sewage, and the fractures were very rough, as if they had been torn off by being bitten alive.

"One step too late." Andy sighed inwardly, though this result did not surprise him in the slightest, not knowing where the largest sewer entrance on the ground connected to this side, maybe nearby, or maybe far away.

The poor policeman was either crushed to death by the debris of a collapsed building and then dismembered by a swarm of rats, or he died in despair in the face of an endless stream of rats after his retreat was blocked, and it is hard to imagine what it was like to be torn apart alive by the rats.

As he walked on, he found a bloodied .22 pistol and some ribs and pieces of clothing.

The policeman was already all over the sewers. There is a huge hole in the wall on one side, and it looks like the marks around it don't look like they have collapsed, but rather like they have been cut open little by little, and it looks like rats have done it.

Andy walked in and walked around for a while, carefully avoiding the passing leeches, and finally saw it in the deepest part.... A huge rat bigger than a two-headed cow fell into its nest with its mouth wide open, and there were holes gnawed by rats on all sides, and the ground was densely packed with wriggling mutated leeches and sucked dry mouse corpses, and the huge rat corpse was not spared, it was almost wrapped in layers of leeches, and many leeches went in and out of its wide open mouth.

The skin of the corpse had turned a strange black blue after the blood had been sucked up, and the huge breasts that had once fed countless young mice had long since dried up, and the dense leech bite marks were mixed with the dirty and messy black hair.

It's probably the queen of mutant rats, it's dead. With a hula, a large cloud of leeches suddenly gushed out of the corpse's mouth, and then scattered into the sewage and disappeared, the originally swollen corpse immediately dried up, and the leeches who attached to the corpse to suck blood also let go, and there was no blood in this corpse that they wanted.

A lot of disgusting chyme was also brought out by the leeches that gushed out, and the terrible rat ate almost everything, and Andy saw crumbs of cement and a lot of dead rats that had been corroded and deformed by stomach acid, and there were also a lot of wood chips and mud.

A light drew Andy's eye to a relatively fresh skeleton, incomplete, with only half a sternum, half a spine, and a head, the flash of light emitted by the reflection of the metal dentures on the head.

Carefully picking up this skeleton with some flesh still attached to it, Andy put it away, this is the hapless policeman, after he was divided by the rat colony, the largest part of it was dedicated to the rat queen, the stomach acid has turned it beyond recognition, but it is definitely the target, after all, it looks like it has just become like this not long ago.

"Leeches attacked rats .... That's why the rats fled to the surface, not because the rat population had skyrocketed, but because something was wrong with the leeches..."Andy thought, since this was the point, there was no point in staying here any longer, and when he got there, he would inform Sheriff O'Connor about the situation.

The rats have already taken a heavy beat, and with patience to eradicate the rats that have escaped to the surface one by one, and then pour a large amount of salt into the sewers to contain the leeches, the hidden danger under Jericho Town will soon be solved.

Squatting on the ground and looking at the map drawn by the Pip-Boy for a while, Andy saw that the sewer network in the vicinity was centered around the intersection and stretched out to the periphery, and he was now on the periphery of the northern corridor, where the rats had dug through to create a large, dry and comfortable nest, and a dense network of rat holes connected to it.

Interestingly, at the end of the eastern corridor of the intersection, there seems to be a piece of unusually shaped part.

After hesitating for a moment to go over and take a look, Andy decided that it would be better not to waste any more time, after all, the nearest exit was on the west side.

He got up and walked towards the south side, first returning to the underground crossing, where most of the leeches had left the place, so there was no need to hang in mid-air and move around, and when he got there, he could walk west for about ten minutes.

As soon as I walked back to the intersection, I saw a light shining out of the corridor on the east side, Andy leaned against the wall and observed for a moment, it was actually like the light emitted by some kind of lighting equipment, could it be that someone came down after he came down?

Thinking that the unknown people who came down to explore the way might be unlucky after encountering the leech swarm, he did not leave in a hurry, but watched the source of the light gradually come out of the eastern corridor; After a while, there was the sound of wading footsteps, and sure enough, someone came down, and listening to this footstep, I am afraid that there was more than one person.

Andy paid attention to his surroundings, sure that the monsters had almost left, and the surrounding environment was safe for the time being, he quickly asked Hull to turn off the stealth mode, although the stealth field that can bend the light is incomparable, but the side effects are too many, according to Hull's instructions, the gamma waves emitted by the stealth field every moment are having a certain effect on the user's brain, which can't help but make him feel anxious when using it.

This mixture of worry about the stealth field and disgust with the sewer environment made Andy not think much about it after realizing that there seemed to be a companion coming down, and just hurriedly joined the other party and left.

Walking towards the dim light, looking at the light that seemed to be shot from a flashlight in a relatively ordinary state, Andy shouted to the figures who were about to walk out of the eastern corridor.

"Hey! Is it Jericho's man? Don't go any further, go back, the man is dead. The footsteps in the corridor stopped instantly, and the next moment, the lights were turned off.

Andy felt bad for a moment and hurriedly threw himself to the side, hiding behind a pillar, but he was still a step too late, and a bullet hit him.

"The autoinjection is complete." There were two tingling sensations in his right arm, and the treatment needle and Ma Boil-X, which were automatically used by Hull, immediately acted on Andy's body, and he just felt some pain in his flank, and the pain disappeared immediately.

"Internal implants are called: subcutaneous armor, hemostasis has been completed, local tissue atresia is performed, surgery to remove foreign bodies will be carried out automatically after the end of the combat state." Andy touched it, and the small area where it was hit became hard and didn't feel anything.

"Thank you, Hel." He hid behind the pillar, and after a barrage of shots, several footsteps were slowly approaching where he was hiding.

Hull's voice came from the back of his neck.

"You're welcome ~ Combat detection was carried out, and the number of hostile targets was determined to be: 3, and the weapons held by the enemy were predicted to be analyzed according to the shooting sound information: target 1 small-caliber pistol, target 2 automatic rifle, and target 3 unknown." Andy sighed secretly after hearing this, he was caught off guard at least three or four times just now, it should have been caused by the guy with an automatic rifle following the sound of strafing, thanks to the Hermes armor has been upgraded, most of the bullets have been blocked or bounced away, and only one shot is already a blessing.

These people .... Who is it?

"Come out." The hoarse male voice shouted behind the pillar where Andy was hiding, the voice was so recognizable that only a very small number of normal humans would have such a bad voice due to trauma or illness, and in most cases, this voice belonged only to ghouls.

"Who are you? What do you want to do? He shouted, and then immediately caused Hull to activate the invisibility field, and the figure disappeared into thin air in an instant.

A bright light pierced the darkness, and the person with the flashlight seemed to adjust the power to the maximum lumen, and for a moment it literally illuminated the dark sewer as if it were day.

Three vague, emaciated figures stood behind the flashlights, and a hoarse voice came from the figure on the left.

"Something is wrong...."Andy was instantly illuminated by the bright light, and the invisibility field was disturbed in a very short moment, making the place he was in seem to be distorted by the air.

Normally, most wastelanders, even if they had the eyesight to notice this fleeting moment, would only think that it was caused by their own dazzle, but this time it was different.... As if witnessing this scene, a hysterical hoarse shout came from the front.

"It's a bA person! It's a bA person!! They still found us!! I tell you, we will never surrender!! Santiago, you go get the guys, we're dragging this bastard! Without waiting for Andy to say anything, one of the three immediately left without a trace, and the other two picked up their weapons and fired horizontally at each other's gun lines, and the tacit understanding of their cooperation was indescribable, and the cross-strafing was like a terrible pair of scissors, forcing Andy who had just jumped out back to his original position.

Immediately after, the sound of two objects falling to the ground sounded.

"Explosives detected, suspected fragmentation grenades." Andy was startled when he heard Hull's voice in the back of his neck, and jumped into the sewage, and as soon as he entered the water, the two people frantically set fire to the splash, and the two grenades were thrown very accurately to the side of Andy's previous hiding place, and then exploded.