NEW DALLAS (FORMER CITY 12), UNITED AMERICAN FEDERATION APRIL 4, 2025 - 5 YEARS AFTER V-C DAY
John Freeman nodded to a pair of Resistance guards as they marched through the main lobby of Pan-American Biotechnical. He wasn't alone: nearly everyone moving through the lobby paid the gun-toting kids some form of respect. One of the soldiers, a babyfaced corporal with black stubble, dipped his slapdash repainted AR2 in response. Most people respected John Freeman. Everyone respected the Resistance - especially in New Dallas.
New Dallas, called City 12 only a half-decade ago, was one of the newest Reclaimed Zones - former Combine numbered cities which had paid for the extermination of Overwatch remnants and Xen overgrowth in human blood. Not all of the city was safe even now - headcrab infections were common in the southwestern quarter, and antlions with a handful of stranded Overwatch were chewing up the suburbs farther south still. The Resistance, honored and respected for their initiative during the Combine occupation, had gladly accepted a supernational role above the new nations of Earth in mopping up Xen infestations and Overwatch survivors when no kind of UN rose to the challenge.
The UN. John shuddered. He had only been five when the Universal Union had leveled the United Nations General Headquarters in New York, but the image had burned itself into his mind. By the end of that day, no government controlled one brick atop another. He had waited another two decades after the agonizing disappearance of his half-brother Gordon Freeman for the Resistance to start the revolution.
When he had reunited with his flesh and blood on Liberty Bridge outside City 21, he had hardly noticed that Gordon had never aged. And Gordon had hardly noticed that John had. The two were only able to mutter a few hellos before a squad of Vorts informed them of another Advisor nearby. Then they had set off for their silent, gruesome work. Sometimes John had preferred the war to this...office job in Pan-American Biotech. His service had made him a veteran-on-call, though, and the Resistance was loathe to lose vets as experienced as him in a mop-up operation unless something tremendous happened.
Just then, something tremendous happened. John's train of thought had barely kept him occupied to his office door when his desktop pinged with a new message. He shut the door, dashed to his chair, and squinted his eyes in nervous anticipation. Only messages from the Resistance were configured to use that particular tone. He navigated to the message as fast as his shaking hands were able.
"AR:109RI-E-A&M C.L-GF," was all it said.
John translated quickly. The code was obvious to anyone with experience in the Resistance, but it was injected into the e-mail header - the subject and body were innocuous-sounding details of a fictional HR report. "Assistance Required: 109th Resistance Infantry engaged Aliens & Monsters at Camp Liberty. -Gordon Freeman." John chuckled and the in-joke. Aliens and Monsters, A&M, was the childish Resistance code for Xen infestation. For them to attack as far north as Camp Liberty, where Gordon was leading the reclamation of the suburbs, though...they must have hit hard.
He dropped his lab coat in his office where he stood, and walked as calmly as he could to the elevator. The Resistance wanted to keep veterans-on-call very hush-hush - that was how he got the job. As soon as the doors closed and the platform creaked towards the building's roof, he patted the left side of his work shirt. Old Reliable, his USP Match that had sent many an Overwatch soldier straight to hell, was missing. His memory flashed in instant recognition. Last night. Drinks. Room. Desk. He had left it at home. He cursed himself, knowing that the one day he had forgot the weapon would be the one time he needed it.
He stepped off the elevator and onto the roof, where a Resistance rifleman guarding an air conditioning shack nodded in recognition when he pulled his military ID. Cover story was that every air-conditioned building in Reclaimed Zones had a rifleman at their control shack to watch out for the notorious headcrabs in air ducts - but those had been cleaned out months ago. The shacks were also supply caches for veterans-on-call like him.
He stepped inside and immediately shed his office clothes, leaving only his holster and undergarments behind in favor of the piecemeal green and black uniform the Resistance had originally stolen from downed Combine CPs and Overwatch, then fabricated themselves. The yellow lambda, universal symbol of the Resistance, adorned his left shoulder brace. It reminded him of Gordon. He opened the armory case to find it...empty.
"Sorry, sir," the guard said, peeking in. "Haven't been able to sneak a shipment in here yet."
John nodded quickly and walked off as if it didn't matter. It really didn't - Camp Liberty was bound to have plenty of weapons. He took a deep breath and mounted the Resistance motorcycle kept on the roof for such an occasion. The young Resistance rifleman saluted. A flock of doves, rare sights before V-C Day, flew overhead as the setting sun backlit John and the saluting kid.
"its time for me to live up to my family name and face full life consequences," John said.
There was no small amount of determination in his voice. He had always lived in the shadow of his brother. Today was the day to live up to the man who cast it.
He drove straight off the edge, nailing the ramp perfectly. His hair and dogtags flew upwards, then downwards in a perfect spiral falling motion as he nailed the 360-degree backflip. He landed, tires making a small screech as they stopped against the boiling pavement. He opened up the throttle and gunned it down the road, leaving a black tire mark as burning hot on the asphalt as his rage was in his heart. No Xen bastards would overrun his brother. Not today.
He felt again for Old Reliable, as if patting his left side would make the USP appear in its holster. Still missing. It irked him, but there was no time to go back for it. As soon as he left the city, the countryside between New Dallas and the outlying suburbs nearly gleamed with pastoral beauty. The plants reached for the last rays of the setting red sun, and newly re-colonized birds were singing their evening songs. The sun boiled and flowed across the atmosphere as it started to set. The pre-occupation motorcycle roared as intensely as John Freeman's anticipation of battle. He breathed deeply.
"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys," he said authoritatively.
John raced along the road, refusing to heed to any of the traffic laws the United American Federation had set up as its citizens finally began to use automobiles again. A police cruiser, one of the first in New Dallas, no doubt, came up behind him with lights flashing. He couldn't afford trouble with an armed officer - not while he was unarmed and corporal punishment, shooting, was still in effect. He reluctantly stopped, face all but flush with anxiousness to get moving again.
The groans he met with were the exact opposite of what he expected from a UAF officer. They sounded like the tortured moans of a Zombine, eerily echoing their wails over their open radio nets. John had seen -and heard- some Resistance members befall the same fate as Overwatch soldiers. He shuddered, and suppressed the urge to run. The officer, in all likelihood, didn't possess grenades. This Zombine couldn't blow himself up, and the headcrab seemed to be suppressed partially by the cop's subconscious routine - traffic patrol. He knew what he had to do.
"I cant give you my lisense officer" John Freeman said, voice a mixture of apprehension and sadness.
"Why not?" the headcrab-infested officer struggled to mutter back.
"Because you are headcrab zombie," he said, more to convince himself than the long-dead host.
With the seamless precision of a soldier who has fought far too hard for far too long, he reached out and tore the officer's USP from its holster before the headcrab could react, then flipped off the safety with a finger and put a round through its disgusting, headhumper brain. It was a tactic he had used during the uprising to end CPs stupid enough to leave their sidearm on their hip. The dead head crab and unenviable host tumbled. John bowed his head for a moment in respect. Infestation was said to be a living hell - some people survived even as the headcrab took full control of their nervous systems. He hoped he had done the man a favor.
He then realized that if headcrabs were this far north already, Camp Liberty was in serious danger. Possibly overrun.
"my brother is in trouble there," he screeched, mounting his motorcycle again to leave the corpses in a cloud of dust.
He patted the new USP that adorned his holster, then opened up the throttle as far as it would go. He would have preferred the speed of sound, but planes were in short supply these days - turbojets all but extinct. He raced past a boarded-up ghost town with a sign proclaiming it as "Ravenholm." In the days since the war, any Xen-infested town was known as a Ravenholm, whether it was near the Eastern European city or not. "u shudnt come here" was scribbled under it, indicating that at least a few survivors held out their against the oncoming tide of beasts.
John almost turned around, but thought he heard Gordon's scream and accelerated towards Camp Liberty instead. He had almost gotten up to speed when he heard shots in the distance. They were still miles away from the camp. Someone was shooting nearby, and the distinctive thump-wump of AR2 rounds could only be heard where Resistance infantry were fighting. John pieced it together. Camp Liberty had already been abandoned. That was Gordon's scream. Gordon and the survivors were making a last stand inside the Ravenholm shanty-town.
John drove in, firing a few well-placed shots from his USP to shatter the brittle wooden gate that advised humans to stay out. He opened up the throttle again, spying a large group of headcrab zombies directly in front of him. A USP would never pick them all off in time, but an explosion... He glanced down at the fuel tank. Yes. Yes, that'd do just fine.
He drove off a building wall, blown out by a long-gone explosion and sticking out of the ground at an angle, to do another flip. Vertigo washed over him momentarily as he calculated the approximate time to disembark. Right about...now.
John Freeman leaped off the motorcycle, kicking it with a grim finality into the direction of the horde. His USP Match was in his hand before he could think about it, firing another slug into the gas tank right as the rear wheel began to sag under its impact with the ground. Boom.
Flaming shrapnel shredded the zombies; jellied gasoline stuck to others and incinerated them. Their screams were only momentary, though, for John had given their human hosts the sweet release of death. As John's boots, then hand, hit the ground, his eyes focused on a dirtied and dented H&K MP7 on the ground. A damaged, but usable, submachine gun. He smiled.
A pair of floating boids sailed low over a standing house nearby, infested by headcrabs as well. Nobody knew the pests could take control of other Xen lifeforms when they came spilling through to Earth. Then again, nobody knew the boids, birdoids, were telepathic. Most humans called infested boids zombie ghosts due to their ability to hover over their preferred areas in life, 'haunts.' Their ability to produce stuttered speech was similarly disconcerting. John decided to waste them before they could dive-bomb him. His MP7 chattered with the force of twenty excellent arguments as to why they should leave. He tapped the clip to ensure there were twenty-five left before firing again.
"Zombie goasts leave this place," he yelled, loathe to waste more ammunition than he had to.
"but this is our house," the infested boids stuttered back, echoing through John's mind.
A twinge of sympathy picked at John's conscience. Boids bonded to physical locations more than any other species he knew of, and they were obviously intelligent enough to plead for their residence. But the headcrabs controlling them were liable to turn hostile at any moment, and dive-bombing zombie ghosts were a threat to both John and any survivors from Camp Liberty. He noted demolition charges, designed to deny the Xen infestation any quarter to grow when the humans evacuated or died days ago, and decided to split the difference.
Another shot from the MP7 detonated the explosives. The house crumbled inwards in a vortex of splinters and shingles, leaving only a thick puff of black smoke and some rubble as evidence it had ever existed. The zombie ghosts' corpses - boids, John reminded himself - John were somewhere under the rubble. John Freeman nodded. They were at peace now, wherever they were.
The yell from Gordon was louder this time, the gunshots stronger. He couldn't have been far at all. He checked his holstered USP, gripped the MP7 tightly, and sprinted across the dirty, open ground to Gordon's unit. The land here was nothing like the pristine, reclaimed land of New Dallas. Blood and entrails stained the dead plants a permanent dark brown. A pair of pants, legs severed from torso and feet, stood in testament to the humans that had died for this shantytown when the Xen creatures came. Headcrabs rotting in the dust were a testament to what the Xen infestation had lost.
He skidded to a stop as he rounded the corner of a former apartment building. The tattered survivors of what was originally the 109th Resistance Infantry Batallion was now screaming and kicking and shooting at a vast horde of headcrabs, zombies, and antlions that fought themselves and each other in a mad dash to infect or kill the human survivors. And above them all was a Gargantua, somehow released from the subterranean hellholes they seemed to appear in after the Resonance Cascade, mauling and throwing aside soldiers of every species in an adultered bloodbath to end them all. This must have been what shut down Camp Liberty. They were all but impervious to slugs.
"John Freeman! Over here!" Gordon shouted over the din, as one of the Resistance fighters loudly and painfully succumbed to the Gargantua's jet of intense biofuelled heat that rushed out of its open claw like a flamethrower.
John nodded grimly. He knew why the Resistance had sent him here. Only Gordon and he had experience in taking down Gargantua in this sector - and the task was a two-man job. He knelt and sighted the beast with his MP7's flimsy pop-up sights. He squeezed the trigger, sending the rest of the clip screaming through the air and directly through the Gargantua's vulnerable eyes. Its deep, thundering roar of pain stunned the battlefield for a moment - then was all but forgotten as fist and rifle met claw and pincer again.
Suitably blinded, the Gargantua was still bulletproof but vulnerable to a surprise attack by its one weakness - electricity. Gordon had used the power of a prewar electric train depot to take one of the beasts out during the Resonance Cascade, and it had taken most of John's squad during the uprising to draw another one into a power plant to short it out permanently. This time might not be as hard.
"its time to end this ones and for all!" John Freeman roared, sprinting towards the Gargantua.
He produced what looked like bulky brass knuckles from his pocket, insulated to the user but designed to give the recipient a momentary shock equivalent to touching a live wire in a power station. Resistance fighters called it the shit kit, inasmuch as 'shit' was supposed to be all you were able to say before it hit you. John found the name aptly appropriate. He jumped and punched the teetering Gargantua in the face, sending untold volts through its punctured, bleeding eye socket and wreaking havoc on its alien nervous system. He fell away from the creature as it fell. Thin, black smoke rose off its motionless body.
The next few minutes were tense, but victorious. The humans had the upper hand with the Gargantua unable to slaughter, and they finished off the Xenian horde without another casualty.
"thanks i could help, bro," John Freeman sighed when the last zombie fell.
Gordon Freeman said "you should come here earlier next time" and they both chuckled the bitter laugh of old warriors.
The old soldiers surveyed the devastation around them. Camp Liberty had fallen, and now New Dallas was in danger. They would have to fight their way back to a radio, tell the Resistance the Xen infestation was headed north - but when they did, John knew they would win. Humanity always won. Even if it took a little while. As the sun set, John chuckled again. It was picturesqe, their victory.
Or at least, it was until an unmistakable roar came from above them. John was seized with terror.
"LOOK OUT BRO!" John screamed.
"NOO! John Freeman run out of here fast as you can!" Gordon Freeman yelled back.
John ran, soldier's instinct overtaking him before he had a chance to comprehend. The men from Camp Liberty went with him, broken and bloodied and in no condition for another fight. John twisted his head back and saw Gordon get one shot off on the tremendous assailant before being crushed by its leg. John only took a moment of confusion and sadness before boiling over with rage.
"I'll get you back evil boss!" John Freeman screamed, blood in his eyes and revenge in his heart.
To be continued?