Dust and dirt drifts over the rotting landscape and the rubble from former homes covers the bodies of family and comrades, the restless dead. The sun is blotched out from the black smoke that emanates from the towering factories that exist thousands of miles away, and the air is thick with the smell of blood and ruin. What the hell happened here, might you ask? The answer is in the question: Hell. Hell happened here, and hell continues to fester here. No one knows quite how it happened, or why, but what we do know is difficult to describe in words alone. A deafening bang erupted that echoed around the world, and reality seemed to shift and flash. That's when the creatures started appearing; no, not creatures, monsters. They started pouring out of the shadowy places, and sometimes just out of thin air. Giant man-devouring fish, reptilians with fangs as large as tabletops, bugs with the power of bulldozers, and horrible crabs that could latch onto you and suck all humanity from your soul, leaving you a walking corpse. But the worst that came from the abyss were not monsters, but intelligent life forms calling themselves the Combine. The Combine needed no introduction. The moment the appeared, they started taking over. They harnessed large gunships and tall walking tanks, and that's about all they needed. We resisted, of course, but it was nowhere near enough. Earth's military defenses were crushed within two hours. Our surrender was organized, humanity was placed in internment cities, and the Combine continued to run the world. Some of us, however, would not go. We resisted the call to relocate and stayed in and fortified our homes and neighborhoods with as many firearms and provisions as possible. There are many other people who went with the Combine into the cities and others that took a direct stand; but this is not their tale. This is our story, this is my story.
Most other teenagers around my age would do normal teenager activities. They'd go out to movies, shop at the mall, learn to drive, and play sports. I used to do all that. Now my main hobbies include blasting down headcrab zombies and taking out a Combine convoy every once and a while. My name is Mike Van Assche, and I am a human refugee in central Florida, a place where the Combine has not established a firm root. My family and I, along with many others in the surrounding town, stuck together after the United States fell apart. We all migrated into my home neighborhood and set up a base camp there, using some bulldozers that we stole to demolish the houses around us to be used as supplies, and to give us a better range of vision so we know of any Combine activity. With our bare hands we built a wall around our refuge point, and we gathered a sizeable militia of about 300 men and strong boys. Our little town held about 80 families, of which were fed and cared for by each other. Food was somewhat of a problem, because with the sun blotched out the way it was, crops were difficult to grow. However, we managed to get fresh meat by sending out groups of hunters to go find animals and bring them back. The new creatures that came about due to the strange bang that started this whole thing were plentiful, so we usually hunted them. But food is always the least of our worries. The fear of the Combine one day finding us here never did settle easily on our minds.
I strolled down my former front lawn, the dead grass crunching beneath my feet. I scanned the town, seeing the usual things: rocky ground, half demolished houses, families cuddled up under the few tarps we have for shade. I walked over to one of the ruined houses and sat down in a thoroughly destroyed armchair, trying to relax. Relaxation doesn't come easy these days, I thought to myself. And after this day, probably never will. I finger at the handgun in my pocket. Almost everyone who can use a gun responsibly is required to carry one around now. There's no telling when there might be a headcrab around that managed to sneak into the camp. Headcrabs may possibly be the most annoying thing in this new reality, I thought. Those small bugs just crawl around and suddenly jump at your head when you least expect it, latch on, and don't let go. And if you can't get the little bugger off within 30 minutes, well, lets just say that you're worse than dead. As I brooded my good buddy Blake came over to the ruins of the house and plopped down cross-legged next to me on the ground. "How's it goin'?" he asked me. "Well, let me recount..." I said, holding up my fingers. "One, there are freak monsters running around unchecked; two, I have no idea how my friends outside of this town are; three, alien bastards are trying to kill us; four, the world's gone to hell; and five, you are still wearing that retarded thing on your head." Blake put on a clearly fake stoic face and pointed at the headgear he was wearing. "This?" he asked. "This is an anti-headcrab hat. It'll protect me if a head-hopper tried to suck me into a zombie." I put on the flattest face I could manage. "Blake," I said. "It's a bike helmet."
"Even so," Blake said, crossing his arms. "A head-hopper's mouth isn't wide enough to fit over the bike helmet, so I think I'm safer than you are right now." I grinned. "Wanna go find a headcrab and find out?" I asked. Blake cringed. "Let's not than say we did, how's that?" he said. I smirked. "Amen."
Damned if I know how we have fun these days. Guess the only thing to do is talk and shoot things. "We got a couple zombies at point 2!" yelled a watcher from the top of the wall at point 2. I answered the call, "Fast or slow?" The watcher paused for a moment. "Just a couple of slow movers; looks like they're migrating across the wastes somewhere." I got up off my seat and beckoned Blake to follow me. "I'm coming up," I said, jogging up to the point 2 ladder that took you up to the top of the wall. I climbed up to the peak, watching my hands on the rust. With so much blasted rust around, it's a miracle no one's gotten a case of tetanus yet. With medicine so hard to come by, sickness in this time was often rewarded with death. Once I was up, I turned around and helped Blake up onto the creaky platform. I turned to the watcher after looking out into the wastes of my homeland. "Where are they?" I asked, squinting through the humid air. "There," the watcher pointed. "They were just unlucky enough to stray this far to our camp." I saw them. The ghastly look of their blood stained clothes and the monstrous bug atop their cranium made them stand out amongst the dusty background. They ambled on slowly, dragging legs sometimes, which made them excellent target practice. I brought my gun out my pocket. "Bet you five poker chips that I could take this bastard down in three shots or less," I said to Blake, flicking the safety off of my gun. "You're on," Blake grinned, taking out his own weapon. Fire one! A missed shot, landed just behind one of the zombies. The creature didn't even know he was being fired at. Fire two! Ah, a fine hit. Not quite where I was aiming for, but still satisfactory. I had hoped for a headshot, which usually meant an instant kill, but instead I hit the chest area. The mindless beast flailed around, wondering what had hit him, and in his thrashing struck one of his traveling companions on the back. I couldn't help but laugh at the stupid creatures as the two zombies turned on each other and ripped each other to shreds. I smirked as I turned to Blake. "That'll be five poker chips, buddy. Keep this up and you won't be able to play cards with me tonight!" Blake stuck out his tongue at me. "Yeah, yeah, but how about this," he offered, clicking the safety off his gun. "If I can't take that last one down over there in one shot, you get my remaining chips, but if I succeed, I get double my chips back from you." I thought about this. Blake wasn't that good of a shot, even if he did get lucky sometimes. Whatever, the world is a wasteland, so what's the problem in risking a couple of poker chips? "Sure. Deal." I said, slipping my gun back into my pocket with the safety on. "Here goes…" Blake whispered, taking careful aim. When he fired, the bullet streaked through the thick air like rocket. If you looked close enough, you could probably see an air trail. Unfortunately for me, the shot hit dead on. The headcrab on top of the zombie exploded, sending yellow entrails everywhere. "Shi-it!" I exclaimed, leaning forward. "Lucky shot, lucky shot!" Blake returned the smirk I gave him earlier. "Lucky or not," he said, "You owe me ten poker chips, and I expect those in my hands by tonight's game, yeh hear?" I made an annoying sound with my lips. "Yeah, I got it." The thing that astonished me, though, was how he ever managed to hit that target. The kid had barley ever touched a gun in his life, and he did something that I usually don't do, heck, that many people don't accomplish! Nothing to worry about, I supposed. Blake has his overly fair share of luck now and again. A loud, commanding, and shrewd voice rang from the bottom of the ladder, knocking me out of my thought process. "Hey, you dumb kids up there! What the hell is going on? What's all the shooting about?" Oh, no, not him, not now! My head really doesn't need this kind of thing right now…
"Yes, father, what do you want?" I responded to the call, watching Blake quickly stow his gun in his pocket. "What's with all the damn shooting?" my dad yelled up at us. "There were zombies near the camp, dad! What did you want us to do, let them go?" I said to him.
"Jesus, what took you so long?" he mocked, the slightest hint of laughter forming in his voice. "Don't dick around when dispatching zombies, take em' down fast! Do you need target lessons?" Now he was just being an ass.
"No, I'm good. Really."
"Alright then, just keep up the good work then," he said, walking away. I swear to God, my dad is the most cynical bastard around. But for being so sarcastic, you have to hand it to him, he gets the job done. At 55 years of age, he is still the strongest man in the whole damn camp, and is kind of the head of the site, a supervisor, so to speak. During the construction of our home, we were at a loss for a leader figure, until my father got tired of the arguing and took it upon himself to lead the camp's construction. After the camp was completed, the authority never left him. The people of the refuge point didn't mind; in fact, they liked him, something which came to my surprise, as I knew my father as 'Difficult to Work With'.
Blake waited a few moments after my dad had left before he spoke. "Man, your dad is scary…" he said, almost afraid that my dad may hear him and kill him. That's Blake for you, he can be tough when the times are, but a really pansy at heart, at least when it came to my dad. But then again, lots of people are afraid of my father, for obvious reasons. He is very large, and with his reddish skin and booming voice, he is reminiscent of some kind of demon.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," I replied. "So, anyway, how do you think this all started?" Blake gave me an odd look, probably about the stark change in subject, but answered anyway. "You know, I have absolutely no idea," he said blatantly. Mildly surprising. He continued, "I know I would usually come up with some kind of crazy idea of what happened, could have happened, or what I know did, but truly, I have no clue." I remembered a rumor I had heard from a traveler we had let in a couple days ago just then. "I heard that this whole deal was a result of a portal explosion in a research lab in Nevada somewhere," I said, regurgitating what I had heeded from the traveler. "No shit?" Blake asked, leaning back against the wall. "Like Area 51 or something?"
"Naw, not 51. It was something like Black… Black Spider? Black Mace Labs? Ah well, the Black something Labs. Anyways, that sounds kind of far fetched to me."
"Yeah," said Blake. "I think that the ability to open up portals is something beyond our science."
"Yeah, me too," I agreed. But I knew I was lying to myself. Hell, if I turned around and jumped off this wall right here, I wouldn't be half surprised if I started flying. In this new crazy day in history, I wasn't sure if everything was possible, or if anything was possible.
Nothing made sense anymore.