Cheers erupted as the harsh sound of the gunship breaking up mid flight resonated through the air around us. The smoke trail of that final rocket lingered in the growing twilight before dissipating. The broken remains of the ship fell onto the beach. Some landed in the water, disappearing into the blue depths. I looked around me and saw several of our fallen. My friends. People I had not known for long, yet had been brought close to through the fighting of a shared enemy. It is not possible to fight side by side with a person and not grow to treat them like family, to wish to protect them at all costs, and to feel guilty when you see that you have failed at that task. But there would be time later to grieve. A man approached, sporting a very strange kind of suit and resting a rocket launcher on his shoulder. This man, though I had not met him before he drove down the crumbling coast road into New Little Odessa, was a man I trusted with my life. He would be the one to free humanity, and it was my duty to make sure he succeeded, even if I was not around afterward to enjoy the fruits of his success. He nodded to me but said nothing. He climbed into his strange car and inched toward the gate that would lead him further down the path toward his destiny. It was not my destiny to follow.
"Drive safely." I said as I punched the gate code into the small keypad and let him through. I watched him drive up the road, and continued watching the place where he disappeared until I could no longer hear the buzz of his engine. Then I turned back and, with the other survivors from the latest gunship attack, trudged toward the main structure in the camp, a two story house. We all descended into the basement where Colonel Cubbage awaited us. As we started to enter the house and move toward the stairs, I stopped suddenly. My comrades glanced at me, but continued to move downward. I realized that I could no longer feel the cold metal of the locket against my chest. I began to panic, but forced myself to calm down. It had fallen off in the fight, that's all. I walked back outside, completely forgetting about the rest of my squad in the basement, and moved toward the place where I had been taking cover during the onslaught of gunship fire. There, in the small shed, on the floor amongst several bullet holes, was the smashed remains of my locket. I couldn't breathe as I picked it up and examined it. The casing was dented and the glass smashed, but all my fears were assuaged as I took in the undamaged picture that remained within.
She was beautiful. The language of an uneducated man who has spent much of his life under Combine oppression is not enough to convey more than that. My words are too poor to do justice to her. She was the reason I fought. The image of her being pulled from my arms and dragged off by Civil Protection is burned into my mind forever. They had begun to beat me, but that didn't matter. The physical pain was masked by my tortured soul's anguish as I watched her struggling, as I watched her break free from that bastard's grasp and run for me, and as I watched the heartless officer raise his pistol and shoot her dead in my arms. Had she made for the door instead, she could have made it, could have escaped, and so it is that I blame myself for her fate. My mind knows that I could have done nothing, but my heart hates itself for not even having tried. I wish that they had killed me, too, but instead they simply left. They left me half alive, with the love of my life dead- bleeding in my arms. They left me devoid of happiness, so instead I filled myself with hate for them. And that is why I fight.
I was startled out of my painful memories by the quiet hum Resistance fighters knew all too well. It was muffled, a ways off down the beach, but growing steadily louder and closer. Panic once again began to rise in me, and I made off quickly toward the house, pocketing the remains of my locket. Scrambling down the stairs, I burst into the radio room, where the Colonel and the other soldiers were discussing the latest attack.
"Drop ship coming straight for us!" I exclaimed breathlessly. Immediately, all the soldiers, as well as myself, moved back out onto the beach, pausing only to grab ammunition and reload our rifles. We stationed ourselves once more about the camp, silently awaiting what we assumed to be another wave of soldiers being transported by the ships. As the drop ship came into view over the ridge, my heart dropped. It was not soldiers that this ship carried. Three long legs unfolded themselves from beneath the ship and onto the beach dropped a Strider. Panic set in as the firing erupted. From all around me my fellow soldiers were yelling to one another as they fired round after round at the Strider. The monster's guns began to rain death out upon the beach; its bullets carved through the shelter of two soldiers, who were violently thrown back by the barrage- dead before they hit the ground. Another, directly in the path of the beast, tried to make a run for it, but the Strider is too quickly upon him and impaled him with one of its spiked legs. Three of the remaining five were now dead, and I and a soldier who went by the name of Gamma were the only ones left. I signaled to her and mouthed "get out", pointing to a narrow trail that lead up the steep rock face of the beach cliff, and she nodded her assent vigorously. I emptied one more clip into the strider, trying my best to slow it down enough for our escape, and then broke free from the shack I had taken shelter in and sprinted for the steep rocky path, Gamma following closely behind. Just as we ducked into the cover of the rock face, we were greeted with the high pitched wail of the Strider's warp cannon, the rock around us glowed brightly, and a chunk of it was blasted to dust as I grab Gamma and pulled both of us as far up the cliff trail as I could.
With dust hanging thick in the air, I slowly got to my feet, coughing and squinting, and felt Gamma rise beside me. We looked back toward New Little Odessa and saw the Strider turning its attention to the house that contained the outpost's radio room and Colonel Cubbage. The warp cannon again shrieked, and with a flash of light the house caved in on itself, burying the Colonel inside and destroying all communications. Its mission accomplished, the Strider let out an unearthly moan, and the drop ship came back into view and once again dropped low to the beach, collecting the three-legged gunner and carrying it off into the distance, presumably toward Lighthouse Point, the next closest operational Resistance station along the coast road. I regained my breath slowly as the air around us cleared, and immediately began making my way up the steep cliff trail, but Gamma grabbed my shoulder.
"Where the hell do you think you're going to go?" She asked me incredulously. "The Strider's gone, and the Combine thinks this place is destroyed, so for now at least we're safe if we stay here."
"This place is destroyed." I told her, not understanding what she was trying to say. "We have no supplies, so our best bet is to get to somewhere that does as soon as possible."
"We should at least check for anything that escaped the cannon." And she was already making her way back down and across the beach. For a minute I stood there, not knowing if I should follow her plan or stick to my own. I decided she may have a point. I remembered the extra medkits and ammo that we'd stashed in all the small buildings of the base, some of which had escaped destruction. I wanted to try and radio ahead to Lighthouse Point to warn them, but I knew that I would never be able to dig through the rubble that was once the base of operations. Gamma emerged from the nearest shack, carrying a supply crate. Using a rock to break it open, we found inside a few submachine gun clips and two medkits. I cursed myself for wanting to strike out immediately and leave all of the supplies here behind. Twenty minutes later we were once again heading up the cliff trail, after having patched up our small wounds and reloaded our guns. We carried as many medkits with us as we could, for we knew not what to expect on the paths ahead. Thankfully, we were nowhere near the beach anymore, so we would only encounter one or two antlions at a time, nothing that a few well placed bullets couldn't handle. As we crested the steep hill I turned back to look once more at the smoking ruins of New Little Odessa. A few hours ago I had thought that I would stay there until the end of the resistance, fighting the Combine from within a small shack, letting people like Gordon Freeman take them on directly. I was sure that was my destiny. Now, my destiny was thrown into the air, and there to face the confusion with me was a woman I barely knew and an old sub-machine gun with which I was intent on taking down the entire Combine.