"They're shelling us!" screamed Anna, one of the three females in my team. There were seven of us in total, and I was the leader. We were in charge of station fifteen, one of thirty in the underground rail system. The combine had recently begun another attack upon the rebellion, this time attacking most of the stations. It was the biggest attack they had ever done. They were filling the city stations with manhacks, and they country stations were being shelled, but with shells filled with headcrabs. Headcrab shells were commonly sent out, but not in numbers like this. A single shell had been known to wipe out entire stations, by killing one or two people when it hit, another four with the headcrabs, and the rest were usually killed by the zombies created. I had seen it before.
Alan, my second in command was running towards the rest of us along with two others, Harriet and Caius. They didn't reach us in time and Harriet and Caius were killed by the shell. Alan lived, but the shell landed on his leg, crushing it six inches into the ground. He screamed in pain. The top of the shell opened.
"Johnny, Anna, take out those headcrabs!" I commanded, "Eddie, come on, we gotta get Alan out!"
I grabbed my knife from the table and ran forward, bent over so that I wouldn't get hit by Johnny and Anna's bullets. Eddie followed my lead.
"Alan! Can you move?" I asked, bending down to his level. He had gone silent, and was probably about to pass out. This seemed to wake him.
"What do you f**king think? My leg is crushed!"
"Don't worry, we'll get you out of here."
I hit him over the head with the butt of my gun, knocking him out. Then,drawing my knife, I positioned it above the leg, as close to the shell as was safe. I quickly sliced downwards, through his thigh. My knife was sharp, and it bit through his leg until it hit bone. Blood sprayed out. I couldn't hack through the bone. In the middle of gunfire, aliens and death, I hadn't had time to think this over. Alan would not survive. While he was still unconscious, I stood up, raised my SMG and reluctantly shot him in the head.
"Ah! What the f**k, Robert?" demanded Eddie. Johnny and Anna had stopped firing and were looking at me in disbelief.
"His leg was crushed. He wouldn't have survived. I couldn't amputate, nor could I leave him to die slowly. I'm sor-"
Something hit me in the head. At first I thought it was Eddie punching me, but then realized it was a headcrab. It enveloped my head, sinking its four claws into my back and abdomen and catching hold of my collarbone and spinal cord. I screamed, but it was hard to make any noise with this thing over my head. Frantically trying to pull the thing from my head, I knew it was too late. A headcrab would cling on till it or its host died.
Already the thing's venom had been into my bloodstream, and the claws had attached to my spinal cord. The venom from a regular headcrab wasn't as bad as a poisonous headcrab's, but it wasn't exactly morphine. It was designed to adapt the hosts blood into something it could feed from, as it would as soon as it had devoured most of the flesh on my head. I began to lose movement in my limbs as the thing connected with my brain via the spinal cord.
It's teeth began to eat my head. It would be able to stop my movement from it's claws in my spinal cord, but wouldn't be able to control me until it's saliva and teeth had bored through my skull and into my brain. My body fell to the ground, limp. In some far off corner of my mind I wondered why the others hadn't shot me. We had had an agreement that if any of us was ever caught by a headcrab that the others would shoot them immediately.
I don't know how long I lay there for. The headcrab slowly bored through my skull, and I continued to scream in pain. After a while I lost the capability to scream, even though I was still in great pain, from the four gouges from the headcrab's claws, the acid boring through my skull and the pain of having my blood "converted" and going through my organs, slowly destroying them. Suddenly, another, new, great stab of pain, right in my chest. It began to spread, upwards and downwards, getting more painful by the second. Oh god... it was opening the mouth. This was one of the final stages of the zombie mutation. The chest would split open, revealing organs and bone, and grow teeth. The zombies would feed through this mouth.
It was more painful then anything I could have ever imagined. Impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary. Soon the pain began slightly to subside, but with occasional jabs here and there as the teeth sprouted. The headcrab had now broken into my skull. It took control over my body. I stood up and began to move.
I had no clue where this thing was taking me, but we didn't move far. The headcrab sensed life somewhere and was moving towards it. My arms swung as it. I heard a dull "thunk" as it hit the ground. I had just killed one of my team mates.
Suddenly, even under the headcrab, I heard a loud crash, and the ground shook. I assumed it to be another headcrab shell. My legs began talking toward it, but didn't have to move far. It was only about two meters away. My hands, now more like claws, raked at the shell with a strange sort of aggression. Without warning, a large force hit the headcrab, and reverberated into my head. It was the shell opening. The large amount of force was enough to knock me over, and I hit the ground hard, temporarily stunning the headcrab. I landed on something squishy and warm. It was the corpse of one of my comrades. As well as the corpse, there was something hard sticking into my back.
It was a sub machine gun.
The headcrab was gaining control of me again. I began thrashing around, trying to reach the SMG. My hand felt it. I tightened my grip around it.
The headcrab almost had full control again. It made me begin to stand up. I swung my arm around, pointing the SMG at myself. The headcrab sensed what I was doing, and tried to take control of my arm. I resisted, fighting to keep the gun aimed at what used to be my head. Barely able to move my fingers, I pulled the trigger. The pain was intense, but I kept firing at myself. The headcrab was dying, the gun out of ammo and all my energy spent. I fell to the ground, bleeding profusely.
"Take that, scum." I muttered as my blood ran out and I sank into the black void of death.