Exile's Aftermath-
Chapter Two-
I'm woken by the glare of sunlight, streaking through holes in the bullet riddled roof to shine annoyingly in my eyes. I blink, trying to clear my blurry vision as I rise groggily from bed and move over to the door, portal gun still attached to my arm where I'd neglected to remove it last night. I adjust the gun's position on my arm before heading out of the room, my half-asleep mind following the smell of cooking food. I make my way drowsily to the kitchen where Helen - our resident cook, it would seem - was cooking a bizarre mix of herbs, vegetables and meat with some sort of home-cooked bread. Whatever it was, it smelled good and was bound to taste even better. As I sit patiently, the Resistance members emerge from their rooms and shamble groggily towards the smell of food the same way I did. As the group of sleep-deprived rebels make their way towards me, I can't help the thought of a pack of zombies; like in those old horror films I watched before…well, before… you-know-what happened. The thought was so perfect that I burst out laughing, though no one could actually hear me. As they make their way over, one of them comments "I never thought of cooking headcrab meat that way, great idea" I raise my eyebrow at him and he explains "Headcrabs. You know, four legged little alien things that like to munch on people's heads? No? Don't look so worried, they're harmless when they're cooked and they make a great steak." After a minute, Helen serves breakfast and we all wolf down her fantastic cooking. Over the breakfast table, we discuss plans for the days ahead. The house we're hiding in isn't safe, so we're going to fetch some cars from a nearby Resistance outpost and make our way down the coast roads towards the ruins of City 17. Hopefully we won't run into many of the Combine's many 'Syths'; genetically engineered creatures augmented with technology like guns, jet engines and armour, but with this many of us, we're likely to attract attention, and not the good sort.
An hour later, we're a safe distance from the house we were in and the mood's far more relaxed. Idle chatter's filling the air and everyone is more themselves without any immediate threats to their lives, the stress melting away in the warm summer sun, the blue sky above us unbroken by any clouds. If we ignore the fact that just yesterday we were in a life-and-death situation, we can almost pretend this is a normal day in a normal world, where all you had to worry about was getting out of bed in time for what you were doing that day, where cold-blooded murderers weren't in control of the planet. We continue down a hill, following the road round a bend and carry on at a leisurely pace towards our destination, laughing and joking around, at ease.
Our carefree mood is shattered by what we find in the middle of the road. A dead Resistance soldier, face mutilated beyond recognition, a bullet hole through his bloody skull, lay next to a small barricade in the road, a Resistance checkpoint. Half the barricade has been knocked to the ground and the supplies he was guarding lie scattered all over the road, bullets rolling idly down the road. Gashes ripple along the man's body, which lies in a pool of congealed blood. We hastily move on from the grisly sight, several of the less experienced soldiers vomiting in the bushes, I turn away, feeling sick from the image engraved on the back of my mind. Further along, we come across a dead dog, its face smeared with blood, a single bullet through its skull. Whatever killed the man killed the dog that had mutilated the corpse. The pool of blood around the dog is still spreading, it died recently. Whoever did this is still around, and we keep our eyes open for any figures in the distance, tension rising as we find no sign, nothing. A noise comes from the trees to the left and the soldiers open fire, but nothing is there. Shaken, I continue by Helen's side, picking up the pace to a slow jog, wanting to get out of here, fast. We continue down the stretch of road until way after the sun has set, desperate for somewhere sheltered to sleep for the night, uneasy about sleeping in the open. After several hours trekking in the dark, we finally call it a day; no choice but to sleep in a clearing just off the road, still far too close to the body of the soldier to feel in any way secure. As we settle down, noises come from the trees to our left, but a check of the surrounding area finds nothing. Despite settling into our sleeping bags, I doubt we'll get much sleep tonight.
Exhaustion finally takes me into sleep's embrace, but my dreams are anything but pleasant. I run, desperately, through the forest, but always end up in the same clearing, where the dead man sits, waiting for me, and a dark figure shifts through the treeline behind. I run, fleeing from the figure, but it always follows, always just a few steps behind, its shadowed face staring holes into the back of my head, sending shivers down my spine. I run and run, further and further, always back at that same clearing, always the same, every time, but still I run and run, faster and faster, more and more terrified, the shadow figure drawing closer, I can imagine its grin, enjoying the chase. I'm back at the same clearing, the same each time, only now, there's a difference. A ring of shadow-men stand around the edge of the clearing, blocking my escape, as I turn to look behind me, to check for a way out that isn't there, I trip and land on the corpse of the man, his bloodied skull inches from my face. The circle grows closer and closer and I try to get up, too weak to manage it, I slump back down. The circle draws closer and closer, nearer and nearer, until they stand around me. I raise my head to meet their cold gaze, and freeze as I sense my own doom. The figures raise their hands to point at me, and then, the last thing I hear is "BANG!", before the dream snaps black as night and I wake with a start.
"KRACKK!" Snapped from my daze; I turn my head to see Helen on one knee, firing shots at a retreating figure, one of our group lies dead in her sleeping bag, a bullet through her head, just like the dog, just like the man. The figure disappears back into the treeline, and we sit, shocked, in our sleeping bags, realising how close we'd all come to being killed. All hopes of sleep brutally shattered, we set about preparing for the next leg of the journey and bury the poor woman. We all keep looking at the mound of earth solemnly, long after she's been buried. Tears spring In the corners of my eyes, and I struggle not to break down like so many of us have done. Not tonight, not again. I'm not going to let my emotions rule my actions, if the leaders aren't keeping it together, then it's hardly fair to expect the rest of our party to. I look around, two of the Resistance soldiers sitting together, sobbing uncontrollably, some of the soldiers looking angry, murderous looks on their faces, and worst of all was the look on the Resistance commander's face, one of doubt, in himself, in us, in our plan, in the whole Resistance itself. I can tell what he's thinking; his face is screaming it to anyone who looks close enough. Beside me, Helen crouches, feverishly loading fresh bullets into her guns, sheathing and unsheathing her knife, turning the blade as if mesmerised, before stabbing it down into the soft earth as if it were our mystery attacker and not the ground.
Later on, we carry on shakily down the road. Twitchy and paranoid, stressed and sleepless, we continue onwards, the events of last night affecting everyone and leaving no one untouched.
A morbid feeling fills the air as we continue onwards, the threat of our stalker hanging over us like a black cloud. It's not far to where the cars are, but after last night we aren't holding out much hope of the Resistance outpost being intact.
As we clear the edge of the forest, our fears become reality. In the distance, smoke curls up from the black outline of the town, our destination. The town was hit hard, if the people here were lucky, they'll have got out in the cars, but I get the feeling it'll be us with the better luck this time. The isolated bits of chatter that had tried to lift the mood before withered and died at the sight, the darkening horizon lit with the flicker of fire that reflects in our eyes.
We move closer, creeping along the shattered asphalt towards the outpost at the far edge of town. Our fears for the inhabitants is confirmed by the sight of corpses littering the street ahead, the road more red than black around them. Snapped into action, the Resistance soldiers moved into formation, spreading out along the sides of the street, one man taking point while the others swept the burnt out skeletons of houses for any threat.
It's a ghost town, everything dead and burning and the weight of everything that's happened over the last few days presses in on us. It crushes our spirit more with every further step, every new corpse we find, every scorched building. We near the town's centre, where the worst sight so far waits for us. A pile of corpses burnt to a crisp atop the remains of a wooden pyre, soiling the air with the smell of burnt flesh and smoke, a monument to the Combine's sins. We take a moment to pay our respects to the poor people, men and women and children, who called this town their home. If the town was attacked this badly, the Resistance base must have been the target, which leaves our fate looking as gloomy as that of the people who died here.
I continue ahead, taking the lead of our little group in my haste to get away from the gory scene. Treading cautiously, we head along the road to the other side of town, where the outpost is, and even from here the damage is obvious. Metal plates that served as heavy barricades lie strewn across the street as though they'd been tossed there by a stroppy toddler. Blue smoke wisps out from every opening in the building and remnants of fire still flickers in the lower windows. Deep holes in the earth lead across the dual lanes of the road in from of us, on course to the outpost, the footprint of a "Strider", perhaps the most feared of the Combine's synths and by the looks of our outpost, clearly one of the most destructive.
The smoke-spewing husk of the outpost looms in front of us and we all stop and stare for what feels like forever at the battered remains of our last great hope, at the faces of dead men and women who couldn't get out in time, unseeing faces pressed against the glass in sick mimicry of children puling faces against windows. We stare, eyes fixated in horrific fascination at the chaos in this place, unable to pull our view away. We stare, and we stare, and we stare, until finally the tears in our eyes and the pain in our hearts becomes too much and at last we turn away. Shakily, I lead the way towards the garage door, dented by the impact of a soldier's corpse, flung with such force into it that the shattered bones pierce out of his body at every angle, a gruesome image that I will never forget until I die, and even then the ghost of it would linger on my corpse. Retching, I heave the remains away from the garage door, turning to vomit my breakfast onto the crumbling ground before dragging it the last metre or so behind a bush. I turn away, but feel twin pricks of heat from his eyes on the back of my neck as I take my first step, shuddering, I turn back to him and close his eyes. It was probably a trick of the light but his lips seem to curl up into a slight smile, grateful. And for the first time, I don't feel as horribly burdened by all I've seen, it's as if when I laid him to rest, I laid all the death I've seen to rest along with it. Looking around at the carnage all about me, I don't feel much at all… just emptiness.
I nod to the soldiers and they raise the heavy steel door of the garage, a bizarre amalgamation of makeshift barricades and botch-job shields. The door groans and clatters as they lift it, a screechy mess of sounds expressing its stubborn unwillingness to open. As soon as it's high enough, we duck under it and hurry inside, guns drawn and ASHPD ready everything is cloaked by the stinging smoke, clouding our vision and making it hard to breathe, fire in our lungs. One of the soldiers hands out a selection of mismatched gas masks and we put them on hastily, desperate for clean air to breathe. As the smoke hisses out of the open garage door, the view becomes clear, and we wish that it hadn't. Skeletons, all flesh burnt off the bones by the acidic gas. God knows how much pain they went through before they closed their eyes for the last time; the thought of it makes me cringe, despite my newfound resistance against these events.
The cars are all still there but we can see immediately they'll take some work before they're roadworthy again. Wheels missing, engines wreathed in black smoke, axles wrenched loose from the chassis. This will take a lot to fix, and that leaves the problem of where we sleep tonight. Very few of the buildings are safe to even go near, but I doubt anyone would want to sleep in here with the skeletons. After a short while, we agree reluctantly to set up camp just outside, none of us likes the idea of being out in the open with our stalker still loose but nowhere is safe to sleep in any of the buildings, the garage is too badly damaged to risk sleeping in. If it collapsed we'd all be crushed to death and the smoke still lingers menacingly.
And so we set to work building a perimeter wall from bits of rubble and debris, others set up sleeping bags and a campfire within the walls of our makeshift camp. Our resident mechanic toils at fixing the least damaged vehicles; getting two back in working condition by the time the 3-and-a-half-metre high perimeter wall is complete and reinforced heavily. After that, we just sit around, the mood rising to a happy hubbub of camaraderie and much idle chatter on subjects ranging from whether Combine soldiers have genitalia to the best way to crochet a beanie hat. As the sun dips lazily over the horizon, morale is high and the smell of Helen's trademark cooking fills the hazy summer air, our ramshackle fort bathed in the soft bronze glow from the setting sun.
All is well.
This, however, could not last. Through the streets lit only by the flickering embers of the houses, a figure moves. Its slim form is dressed all in white, with a glowing eyepiece streaming light out to survey the area ahead. Our stalker has returned. Heel springs carry its form forwards faster, lighter, nothing to fear from gravity's embrace, it sprints along the charred remains of roofs, the tops of scorched walls, leaping and rolling like a ninja. It crouches like a cat on the rooftop opposite and readies a rifle to fire. Pulling back the bolt to load the shot, it raises the scope to its single eyepiece and fiddles with the view before moving it in tiny, precise movements to centre the crosshairs on its target. Underneath the helmet, the assassin smiles as it tightens its grip on the trigger, at one with the gun, the bullet and the task at hand. As if sensing the cold hand of death on his shoulder, the Resistance Commander whirls his head round, eyes widening at the sight of a single red dot on a rooftop he opens his mouth to speak, the last thing he will ever do. Then cold lead meets warm flesh and he plummets backwards, the light in his eyes disappearing like candles being snuffed out. There's a thud and a split second later, the splatter of blood on the warm grass. Everyone snaps awake and grabs their guns; meanwhile the red light from our stalker's eyepiece has disappeared, changing its position to get a better shot. We stand around, tense, some of our number crying over the death of the Commander, the rest of us scanning the surroundings for our assailant, but it seems like it disappeared into thin air, a ghost.
Then, a shout. We whirl round, to see another of us dead on the ground, a curved knife sticking out of her back. The walls we built to keep us safe act like a prison, keeping us trapped like fish in a barrel, funnelling us out the only exit. This was a big mistake. A body knocks into me and I feel hot liquid spatter down my back, on impulse I spin around and the still-warm corpse of another soldier falls to the ground, blood spurting from the hole in his throat. A flash of red from the left, we turn and open fire, a small spray of blood fills the air before our ever-agile attacker dives into cover, loosing off a shot as it does so, deadly accurate, another of our number drops, the grass is now more red than green. A hail of grenades soars over the wall and the sounds of panicked running carry to our ears, one step, two steps, three steps, BOOOM. Thrown to its feet by the blast, it scrambles to its feet, discarding the twisted wreck of its rifle to dive into cover once more. The sound of a pistol being cocked rings out, and I smile. Now we have the advantage. In the temporary lull as our enemy recovers, I take a look around at who we have left. Five resistance members and Helen stand with me in the camp, the ground littered with the bodies of the fallen and the moaning injured, hit with shrapnel from the explosion. Looking at the people we've lost already, I grimace and tuck the ASHPD tighter against my shoulder and brace myself for the coming battle. Time to make them pay.
Suddenly, too quick for us to react, the assassin sprints forwards, it fires, once, twice, three times and the soldiers fall like ragdolls, I take a hit, the force of it sending me spinning round, round, down into the bloodsoaked grass, blood spurting from my shoulder. I look up to see Helen loose a burst of machinegun fire before the white figure collided with her, grappling onto her and knocking her to the ground. Helen swings a punch, gun trapped, useless, underneath her but the assassin doesn't even react, ripping the knife from Helen's belt and raising it to strike. Somehow, I get up and sprint inhumanly fast towards it, hooking its head with my elbow and pulling it backwards away from Helen. I barely get two steps before it whirls around violently to smash me off my feet, the helmet flying off its head as I tumble back onto the ground for the second time in as many minutes.
It turns its back on me as I lie out of breath on the floor and retrieves the knife from the grass, kicking the gun from Helen's grasp and stamping on her stomach. Long black hair, like Helen's, spills down the back of its jumpsuit, swinging down in front of its face as it leans over Helen's body, knife in hand. As it raises the knife above its head in preparation for the kill, I heave myself up, every movement a marathon challenge. As its arm begins the downward arc, I snatch up a gun from the floor and fire a shot clean through the back of its head. It stays knelt for a moment before toppling backwards onto the grass, Helen lying in shock, face covered in blood, hopefully not her own. I move to help her up but she bats my hand away with a ferocity I wasn't expecting from her, tears pouring from her rage-filled eyes. I sign "What's wrong?" and she simply points at the corpse of our assailant. Looking at it now, I can see it wears the same uniform as Helen, but worse than that is the face. A wave of sheer guilt hits me like a steamroller and I feel the prickling of tears in my eyes.
Older, yes, and with a few more freckles, but the face of our attacker was almost identical to Helen's, they could be sisters, twins even. And I just killed her.
I look back at Helen, my face slack with horror. I sign "sorry" but she snarls at me and spits a gobbet of blood and saliva into my face, shaking her head furiously. I collapse to my knees, defeated as she runs off, vaulting the rubble of the wall, the sound of her sobs ringing out through the deathly silence of the night, growing steadily quieter the further she goes.
I curl up in a ball, unconcerned by the blood that soaks my clothes and cry, repeating the same thing over and over in my head; 'What have I done?'
'What have I done?"
Author's Note – Sorry this is so late, my mind sort of clogged up when I was writing the 2nd half of this chapter, and this meant I didn't finish it before I went on holiday last week. I came home to find the chapter, along with my original copy of chapter one and a whole bunch of other files on my computer had corrupted and were unusable. I've been rewriting this from scratch since Saturday evening when I got back and I was still stuck on the 2nd half until today, when I broke through the creative block and wrote the rest of it.