High Ground: Windhover

A/N: Well, here I am again in the Halo section, but this time with something new. My good buddy Obsidian Thirteen asked me if I wanted to do a spinoff for High Ground and I of course agreed.He provided the setting, and I provided the character of Windhover, who is mentioned a couple times near the end of High Ground. So, I hope you enjoy.

Chapter One:

Glimmer

It was dark...very dark. And cold. Joseph Windhover subconsciously realized that it was dark because his eyes were closed. His senses began to come back to him; he could taste something metallic in his mouth. Blood. It had to be blood, he realized. Then, he realized something else; he hurt. Everywhere. Everything was sore from head to toe. He slowly sat up and opened his eyes. His visor was shattered and bits of it were probably embedded in his face. Now he remembered more; he was an ODST, a Helljumper. The baddest bunch of mother fuckers in the United Earth Space Corps. Joseph removed his helmet and slowly surveyed the area in front of him. To his right, a warthog lay on its side and, windshield broken to pieces and a man half crushed underneath the rear, his face contorted in a horrible display of agony. Joseph groggily pushed himself to his feet and started walking toward the wrecked vehicle one step at a time, struggling to keep his balance.

He approached the vehicle and got a better look at the poor crushed soul; he was handsome...young, too. Blonde hair, blue eyes, in good shape and a military uniform to boot. Windhover suddenly remembered who this man was; his name had been Derrik Montreal and they had escaped Jackson together...or tried, anyway. The Helljumper couldn't quite recall why they had been trying to escape, only that they had. He tried to push the vehicle back onto its wheels, but it was too heavy for just one man to move. After several futile minutes, he gave up and sat down beside the warthog. A stinging pain suddenly flared up on the right side of his face and a closer inspection of it with his hand revealed what he'd guessed earlier; fragments of his visor were indeed embedded there. Joseph began the painful task of removing the glass from his flesh and simply dropped it on the ground beside him.

Joseph stayed there a while, observing the night sky and the clouds in it as they lazily rolled overhead. He was trying to remember why he and Derrik were escaping Jackson. For what seemed like an eternity, he struggled to think, to remember, but just couldn't seem to summon any recollection of events past now and who he was. He quickly grew frustrated with his apparent ineptitude and slammed a gauntletted fist into the warthog's frame angrily, an action that resulted in a resounding 'whump' and loud screams of pain intermitted with curses in a half dozen languages. Something grabbed Windhover's attention in the distance and he immediately froze where he was. The pain was suddenly gone and his body was tense. There it was again! It sounded like a low, painful moan...almost sad. Joseph took no chances; he reached for anything he might be able to use as a weapon and carefully circumvented the warthog's front side to the underbelly...and the sound disappeared.

For several tense minutes, Joseph stood there and waited, listening. His eyes scanned the grassy field before him and found nothing; the only sounds his ears could here was the sound of the wind softly blowing. He started around the back of the warthog and heard something that made him crige. It was a wet smacking sound coming from the other side. There was suddenly a pungent smell in the air that reminded Joseph of a rotting corpse...but Derrik's body couldn't be that old. Could it? He cautiously peered around the warthog and saw something that nearly made him sick. There was a man hunched over Derek's torso, which was shaking slightly on the ground, and it looked as though...no, there was no way that was happening. Joseph stepped around the warthog clutching a rather large piece of his visor in his right hand.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The other didn't answer. It appeared as though the newcomer had siezed up from fear, but that was not the case. Joseph took a step back as the other man turned, realizing that there were chunks of flesh hanging from this person's mouth. Blood soaked the man's shirt and his eyes lazily stared in the ODST's direction. His hands reached out for Joseph as he stood, shambling toward his intended prey unnaturally. Joseph panicked and backpedalled, just trying to get away from the lunatic that was attacking him. He stumbled and shouted as the other man fell atop him and moaned loudly, lowering his head to try and rend the flesh from Joseph's body. In one swift movement, Joseph slammed the piece of broken visor into the man's head and leaped up after rolling his attacker off of his chest. The man lay there on the ground, convulsing as though he were having a seizure...then stopped. Joseph watched in morbid fascination, panting for air. What in the world had just happened? He shook his head and looked back toward Derrick's body...and sorely wished he hadn't. His former companion's innards were laying on the ground beside his half-eaten corpse. Joseph felt his stomach turn and he vomited in disgust. After that, the ODST quickly set about trying to find some way to dig a hole. Luckily, there was an entrenching tool in the warthog. A few minutes later, there was a hole in the ground and a pile of dirt atop Derrick's corpse.

Joseph now remembered why he was where he was; they were trying to escape these things that had overrun Jackson City. It now seemed that their escape had failed for some reason and now Derrick was dead and Joseph had no means of transportation. Other than his own two legs, of course. Resigned to his fate, Joseph sat down in the driver's side of the warthog and ran a hand through his short hair, trying to remember who exactly he was. Joseph Windhover, Gunnery Sergeant, UNSC ID 22-315-0691. He sighed, growing tired of just sitting here and doing nothing. Joseph was about to abandon the wrecked vehicle when he heard voices on the radio. Voices! People! He rushed to grab the transmitter, fumbled with it for a few seconds, then qued the radio.

"Hello? Is anyone out there? Please respond, over." For a tense moment, there was no reply; had he missed his chance? Then, one of the voices he'd heard before came back on the radio.

"This is Sergeant Scott Wood, who's this?" The man sounded like hell...though Joseph was sure he sounded the same way.

"Jesus Christ, I'm glad to hear another goddamned voice. My name is Joseph Windhover...and rank doesn't seem too important nowadays; does it Sarge?" he laughed cynically as he spoke.

"Know what you mean." came the reply. "What's your location, soldier?"

Joseph stood and quickly glanced around for some way to get his bearings. He spotted a roadsign. "Uh, about ten miles outside of Jackson. I just flipped my Goddamn warthog. Where are you?"

"At a base called Outpost 31. We're probably not too far away from each other; we came out from that city a few days ago."

"Are you shitting me? Christ, I can't believe that. Which way from the city?" Joseph couldn't believe his rotten luck...could Derrik have survived if they'd met up with this Sergeant Wood and the others that were probably there with him? Joseph pushed that thought aside; now was not the time to be thinking about the 'what ifs'.

"North."

As if that were a code word, memories from the past few days came flooding back; he remembered everything now. Including most of the city's former residents slowly moving north. That was how he and Derrik had escaped that hellhole.

"Goddamn, I think you guys might have company soon. About a day and a half ago, I saw a pretty large force of those things heading north. I don't know if they know you're there, but you should keep your eyes peeled. Gunny Windhover out."

Sergeant wood came back with the standard reply, to which Windhover paid no mind. He began looking for weapons and found a sniper rifle that had belonged to him, as well as a pistol and some ammo for both. windhover slipped the ammo and pistol in their respective places and searched for a weapon that had a little more in-between range than the ones he was carrying. Another search earned him the battle rifle that had belonged to Derrick and what ammo the other man had been carrying. Joseph then set to work on trying to get the radio out of the warthog to carry with him and succeeded. Then he began the long trek to Outpost 31, hoping he could make it there and join with the rest of the survivors.