Half-Life 2 belongs to Valve, not me!
Gordon kneels down and holds his shotgun to his side, trying not to breathe. The choking stench of long-rotted flesh and mold is almost too strong, like it penetrates his senses no matter how hard he tries to keep it out. He's crouching in a small alcove – Ravenholm is chock-full of these things, these nooks and crannies that apparently serve no other purpose than to be a hiding place for a weary adventurer. Just outside the wall to his right, a couple of zombies are ripping each other apart. He likes to believe that they're putting each other out of their misery, but that doesn't make the blood-curdling sounds any easier to take. These were real screams, not like the kind in horror movies, but real, pierce-his-soul, terrified and tormented shrieking. This is what he'll be hearing in his nightmares, if he even survives that long.
He swallows and turns his attention to a zombie that's just shambled in. Some part of him wants to look away from the gaping hole in its chest, its exposed and dying organs, but another, stronger part wants to stare in morbid curiosity. It just hobbles over to the opposite corner and sits down, then begins clawing at its chest and writhing around on the ground in a pool of its own putrid blood. He can't even watch. He turns away.
He has to get out of here, he knows that. It just seems so safe right here, in the dark… ironically. The temptation to close his eyes and rest for a while tugs violently at his conscious, but of course that would be stupid. He can't sleep until he's safe, and being in a knee-high hole in the wall, in a room full of zombies, in Ravenholm, hardly counts as that.
He sighs, fighting the urge to gag, and aims his shotgun for the zombie's head.