Daniel fumbled with his pistol as he followed Liam and Noah. Being the one with rebel body armor, Liam took point and ran head first into the corridor. He took his custom SMG carbine and aimed around the corner looking for any combine contacts.
"Noah, even your suspicions were wrong. Nothing is here." Liam said coldly towards Noah.
"Even I thought so, and that's saying something," Daniel joked with Noah and Liam.
"Maybe if we can find some ammo around here, it's not entirely useless." Noah replied to their statements. Daniel rushed forward and opened a combine built weapons crate. He struggled opening it.
"Wow, how did none of us see that?" Noah asked. Daniel didn't respond and as he opened it he celebrated quietly. He took out a strange looking shotgun, presumably combine tech.
"A goddamn combine shotgun," Daniel said excitely. He shuffled through the box and found many clips for it. "Comes with ammo too!"
"Really! Well damn." Liam said. Daniel quickly reloaded his shotgun and pulled the pump back, making a satisfying metalic clicking noise. He stuffed twelve clips into his bag and backed up from the box.
They exited the building and ran back to their camp with their supplies. Liam sprinted ahead and put his hand up to signal everyone stops. He signalled everyone crouch down, and they did. A metrocop captain walked out of the woods infront of them along with six other metrocops.
Daniel ran out ahead and dove. He sprayed shotgun fire at the lower ranked metrocops and they instantly turned and took their weapons out. Daniel stood up quickly and was shot in the gut with a pistol.
Liam stood up quickly and shot the captain in the head. Noah took his combine pistol and shot the final metrocop as Daniel suffered on the ground. Once the metrocops were down, Noah went to pick Daniel up.
"Daniel, great job. Now we're set back a couple of days before we can get to White Forest now. We're only about 5 miles away, too." Liam complained.
"Can't we just take a sprint and get there?" Noah whined.
"We could if you want to get shot and killed! If we do it like we do now, we have minimal risk of running into those damn CPs!"
"We need a goddamn car."
"Good luck finding one you idiot!" Noah ended the argument with. Noah carried Daniel back to their camp and sat him down near the fire leaning on the bench. Liam took the butcher knife and started cutting up a dead headcrab.
Once Liam had finished cutting sections of the headcrab, he attached it to a pot, and set it up to a harpoon with a hook and hung it over a fire made from parts of a broken crate. He checked their rationing on food ingredients that made the cooked headcrab taste better. He grabbed his mug from the metal sheet that was being used as a table and took a swig.
The water didn't taste good, but it was better than drinking Breen's Reserve. Noah placed a bag of emergency flares to the side of a knocked over log and checked it. They only had three more until they had to find another way to start the fire. Noah hurried over to the medical supply bag which only had a single shot of morphine, a knife, bandages, and some sort of cleaner.
Noah removed his gas mask to inspect their equipment carefully. He grabbed the bag and moved over to Daniel who was hunched over bleeding from his gut. Noah carefully used the shot of morphine on Daniel and proceeded to eject the bullet from him with the knife. The blood flow through the wound slightly increased one the bullet was removed. He cleaned the shot and bandaged it.
Liam moved the pot from the hook and placed the cooked headcrab onto a thin slab of cardboard. Either headcrab cooked fast, or Noah took a long time on the procedure. Liam salted the cuts of headcrab, slightly covered them with a quarter of a bottle of rare steak sauce, and added cut onions into the mix. It made the headcrab more bearable to eat, but not entirely.
He seperated the slices of headcrab onto three smaller cardboard plates. One for himself, Daniel, and Noah. Noah hesitantly accepted the plate, and so did Daniel. Daniel must have been hungry, because he grabbed a makeshift fork and took a small portion of his headcrab and took a bite.
"Damn, who knew headcrab could taste decent?" Daniel questioned, impressed.
"Back in Black Mesa East, I learned from the Vortigaunts how to cook these things. Not as good as how they made it, but it's still good I guess." Liam replied, eating his section of headcrab.
Noah was still hesitant to try the headcrab. He had only previously eaten dry food rations they had found from abandoned buildings and occasionally from combine rations. He took a bite and didn't have a reaction.
"Well, it's edible is all I can say." Noah admitted. After they had all finished their plates they sat there waiting for the day to reach closer to night. Noah flipped his gas mask back down and went into thought.
"Did those cops have an APC? If so, we can package our stuff in some crates and drag them along in that old trailer there." Noah thought out loud.
"You know, that idea isn't half bad. We can make it look like we're some cops transporting some 'illegal substances' back towards a combine base or something!" Daniel said.
"Since you guys are less equiped, I'll go look from where they came. If I don't come back, you guys know what to do." Liam fearlessly stated. In his mind, he was scared to encounter combine by himself without the extra guns.
Without exchanging goodbyes, Liam stood up, grabbed his carbine and a pistol and backtracked. He walked into the woods where the combine had originally walked out of, and he saw nothing. As he went deeper through the woods, he found a long road leading to a tunnel. The tunnel was of course blocked with debris, must be why the combine had stopped there. He looked around for a vehicle of any kind, except destroyed ones.
He went behind a collection of bushes and saw a strangely built vehicle. He ran and jumped up onto the first step of the vehicle. He used that momentum to jump straight up and land on his stomach on the top. He hit the side mirror with his hand, and the top window slid open, dropping him in it.
It's a good thing APCs were not fueled by gas, but by some combine technology. He wired the vehicle into drive and checked behind him. He drove back through the woods and slowly crept up on his camp. Noah had ran behind the concrete cover they had set up and pointed his silenced sub-machine gun at the APC.
Liam popped the window open and appeared out from the top of the APC.
"Found it." Liam boldly claimed.
"See any combine?" Noah questioned him.
"Nope. Get crates full and onto that trailer. We need to do this quickly."
Liam jumped out of the vehicle, landing roughly on his knees. He ran to grab items such as the butcher knife and steak sauce and pack them into crates with padding. After half an hour of packing, they all packed them onto the trailer and Liam connected the trailer to the APC. There was barely enough room in the APC itself to hold all three of them, so Noah would ride in the trailer.
They started their journey, all that was left of their camp was the burning crate remains and harpoons. Liam turned the dirt road and it lead to straight asphalt road. He drove down that road for a solid five minutes before making a turn off road into a small river. He carefully drove from that river to solid dirt road again. Traveling at 30 miles per hour, they only had a couple minutes before they would be at the White Forest enterance.
Liam abruptly stopped the car only half a mile from the White Forest enterance. Daniel questioned his motives, but Liam jumped out and grabbed a can of orange spraypaint from a crate. He drew a lambda with a circle, signifying it was a resistance vehicle, not a combine one, so they would not have any mishaps.
He got back in and continued driving them to White Forest. They had soon come up to a well built structure blocking a river made out of logs and metal sheets. The metal sheets had a quickly painted lambda on it. A rebel with a crossbow walked forward from the watch tower and looked at the suspicious APC.
Liam popped the top and stood on top of the APC.
"Where did you find an APC not in use?" The unnamed rebel watchguard shouted, asking Liam.
"Me and my buddies encountered a group of civil protection. There was a captain, so it was guaranteed there would be an unmanned APC if he was dead." Liam answered, him shouting too.
"Lucky find! Come in and park that in the garage so we can look at it!"
Liam hopped back into the seat and surprised Daniel by speeding up again. They took a turn and were soon at the main enterance of the White Forest base. He parked his APC along with his trailer inside one of their garages.
He got Daniel and Noah and walked with them to a group of more rebels. The rebels only went to look at the APC. They didn't touch the trailer, because Noah had marked it as personal on the back door for the trailer.
"We're only here for supplies, we should get back out and take more land." Liam said to a rebel captain.
"Not for a few days. You need to speak with Kleiner." the captain said.
"Kleiner? What does he have to do with anything?"
"Follow me." The captain demanded, and only Liam followed. Daniel and Noah had to stay back. The captain lead him to an elevator and they took it down. He lead him into a room where Dr. Kleiner had just finished a conversation with someone he couldn't see.
"Ah, hello Mr. Jefferson. If you have noticed, two people are wearing an experimental version of Dr. Freeman's HEV suit. We have only built three prototypes for people we see as important. This version of the suit is not as powerful as Gordon's Mark V, but it is still a good source of protection. We will be providing you with a Mark I Lambda Environmental and Vital Protection suit. Or, LEVP for short. Let me get my clipboard." Kleiner started a speech.
Liam groaned. He prepared to listen to an explanation of the suit. After thirteen minutes, Dr. Kleiner had finished his detailed explanation about the prototype suit. Kleiner lead Liam to a tube that held an LEVP suit.
Liam put the suit on and inspected his hands. He flipped them both over and looked at the back of them. He flipped them forward again. He clenched his hands to test the feel of the gloves.