Chapter 3: Moaning Canal

I was sitting on one of the chairs that were in our station, rocking my legs quite carelessly. Our station was a rather cosy place, as much as a segment of the sewers separated by chipboard and old roofing panels, could be defined as cosy. The ceiling was quite high above us, no real idea why, we had a radio station, which we didn't listen to as the only things that we could hear from that were orders in German. We also had a generator to power it and the lights in our sector. We slept on two old mattresses and also had some carpets to overlay the sticky cement floor but they actually made it a bit worse as they were very dusty and stepping on them always made a cloud of dust. Whoever was stationed here before us really didn't give a damn about anything.

Most importantly, though, from all the things that we had, there was a power outlet. Through it we could use the power to charge one of my MP3 players and listen to music! Or if not charge, due to stale battery, then to keep plugged in and powered. Aposiopesis wasn't far behind and we took turns keeping watch and listening to music. But in order for us to keep doing our work we repositioned the "watch tower" to a higher place which we made by stacking some chipboard boxes on top of each other. Being all the way up really helped us see the main route of the canal and the one which came perpendicularly.

Every other day Edmond came with fuel for the generator and with food. He was quite upset with us over the "scavenging" of the basement but then again, we did our all so hard and labouring job just fine. Even though we had all these extras I really hoped that being part of the Resistance would be more fascinating and interesting than this. We spent almost a week without anything happening at all. Not even rats trying to eat us. No headcrabs, no zombies, no nothing. Even the sewers stopped smelling like sewage. Or we got used to the stench. I am not quite sure, but the latter sounds more probable.

Aposiopesis was equally unamused and every now and then we had short walks around the dark parts of the network to see what we could find. Maybe some useful items could be stumbled upon. We did realize the danger that we were putting ourselves in but we were quite confident that we would be able to handle anything that we could find here.

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything fascinating. The walls were mostly blank, made from old rounded by ware-and-tear bricks, which were visible because the coating, which was peeling off. There was the occasional ancient graffiti but pretty much, that was it. There weren't even zombies or headcrabs. The old railing which was once used to keep the workers from slipping into the canal was still there, rusted and bent here and there, but was generally intact. Also useless, as the amount of sewage flowing through the canal itself was something like a tenth of what was normal before the Combine.

As shocking as it may sound the most interesting things that we stumbled upon were a whole set of old shoes, which were used to plug some drain, quite loosely, but considering that it was constantly leaking, we concluded that there was water building up in there.

"I wonder who is getting his revenge…" I asked as we walked calmly along one of the smaller and tighter sewers later that day.

"Hm?" Aposiopesis glanced at me for a moment.

"That shoe-plugged drain."

"Ah…right. I have no clue." He replied. "Maybe the Resistance are being nice to someone. Why do you ask?"

"Because I am bored as fuck and there hasn't been anything interesting since we came here. Seriously. Being up there and doing nothing was better than being here and doing nothing."

"At least we are doing nothing for a good cause…" He scoffed.

We went on walking in silence. I knew that that sounded quite like the "spoiled child" but all things considered there was no real difference apart from the "freedom" to go "wherever" we want. I traced another barnacle with my flashlight and contemplated it for a moment, realizing that the tongue was not hanging. A few moments later the mouth it opened and spewed a rat's crushed bones. They fell down on the ground with a blob like sound. They were covered in slime and ooze which slowly flowed away.

"Magical." I said and we went on.

This part of the sewers was new to us and there were more old graffiti on the walls but nothing more interesting than this. I would have enjoyed fighting a zombie, even though were armed just with a wrench and a pipe, as the others didn't feel like we needed guns. Honestly, I didn't feel like using one, even though each and every Overwatch soldier deserved a bullet in the head.

"Well, a dead end." I said as we stopped at the end of this part of the sewer, with only a whole set of pipes leading into the canal. One of the mentioned spilled some sewage water into the quite dry trench.

"Let's get back. We might be needed to escort someone" He said with voice completely devoid of emotion and we turned around. This day couldn't get any more boring.

As we traced our steps back to our station the day did in fact get more interesting, as we encountered our first zombie in the sewers! At first we taught that it was someone living and lost but then "he" and with lumping moves it slowly dragged itself around, moaning. For luck or not, there was also a barnacle in the way and we paused for a moment. I left my wrench on the ground and positioned myself in a line with the zombie and the barnacle.

"Oh, but I wanted to whack it a few times!" Aposiopesis whined with disappoint.

"I didn't take you for so violent." I said and smirked. Aposiopesis scoffed in response and looked at the zombie. "Besides, I'd rather not…" And then I clapped loudly a few times, dragging the zombie's attention.

"Pff, why not? It's not like it matters."

"Well…I think that the person inside is still alive and in enough pain and agony as it is."

"What makes you say that?" He asked and tilted his head as the zombie limped towards us, moaning incoherently.

"The moans."

"The moans, eh?" I needn't look at him to know that he was making one of his scepticism faces. "Yes, I think he's reciting Shakespeare."

"I suppose you need to hear it to understand."

"Or…you could tell me about it?"

I sighed and backed away as the zombie almost got to the sticky, brown tongue.

"Well, when they are shot at they react. With something like "Ow". Shouting in general is a reflex to "warn the other humans" of danger." The zombie reached the tongue and the extension quickly stack itself to the unlucky zombie. "Obviously this isn't quite valid at the moment. But when they are on fire I seriously can distinguish yells of pain and things like "Oh my goooood! Aaaaaarhn! Oooo…" And…other things alike."

"Are you sure?" He probed further as we watched the unfortunate zombie being dragged towards the maw of teeth. It bashed its hands around and seemed like it was aware of what was going to happen to it as it kept intensifying its struggle.

"Well…I am sure what I heard. I might be wrong but then again…if I am right, the best thing that we can do is to let them die as fast as possible."

There was a loud crunch that followed and the limbs relaxed down. The barnacle was slowly devouring the whole body and sickening crunching noises came from the corpse, as it was being crushed. I knew that barnacles were a force to be reckoned with but this really heightened my awareness. What was more shocking was that it did take it all in, growing in size almost three times, stretching itself in very awkward position.

"Well, I'll be damned…" I said.

"Yeah, no happy end."

I was a bit shocked by what I saw.

"Happy end is a point of perspective. And we seem to be laughing."

"Pfft, don't make me laugh."

We went back to our station and I got on top of the watch chair. Everything was calm and quiet. With delight I put my headset on, leaned back and switched the music on. It felt so good…

The next day Edmond walked up to us with three citizens, who looked terrified and pale as snow. I took my headphones down and got off the chair on the top with one "heroic" leap from the top.

"Hello." I greeted and waved at the group, with some content that we were finally going to do something useful…or at least interact to a minimal level with others. The group greeted us back but Edmond remained a bit cold and went directly to the point.

"Well, these are the first guys that you will have to escort." He said and then handed us a 9mm gun each.

"Why the change of heart?" Aposiopesis asked, as he took the cold metallic weapon. The German man sighed and looked back.

"The Overwatch seems to be on to us." He started speaking, going directly to the point. "Some of the lookouts report that there is a lot more Combine activity than usual, near the various entry points."

He explained with a bit worried tone. I really didn't like this piece of information. This meant only trouble and the chance of dying. Or even worse, being captured. I wasn't quite sure of what the Overwatch did to captives but the rumour was that being turned into a soldier was the "good" ending scenario for your life.

"So…" Edmond went on speaking. "We will relocate you two to a more inner part of the route, all the way down to station 5, which leads out to the end of the canals." He went on and I looked at Aposiopesis. This was good…I think. "You will have a third member of the Resistance there because you will need to be able to communicate with the transport when it comes and the girl knows English too."

"Okay…Let's pack up then." I said and turned around towards our stuff. It wasn't like we had made ourselves at home but some of our belongings were spread around the "house". I quickly packed our electronics and duct taped them again, stashed everything back in the suitcases and within a few minutes we were ready to go.

Ready and worried. No matter how we looked at it, this was not really good. What I had noticed when we arrived seemed to have been true and we would have to come up with some way of getting out of here undetected, if need would arise.

Edmond lead us all towards the next station, quite carefully, with a weapon held out. Unlike us, he had a SMG1 and this further concerned me but I decided not to voice my worries as it would not be of help.

I took one suitcase and Aposiopesis took the second before we started walking in silence towards the next station, avoiding the numerous barnacles that were hanging in groups here and there. Some were latched above the almost dry sewer canal and some seemed dead, probably from starvation.

We walked cautiously along the old canals, quite happy that the Resistance had installed simple light bulb lamps along the way. They didn't shine too much light in the damp and dark sewers but it was something. As if there was nothing out of place. At all. Trash everywhere, a dead headcrab once in a while, and barnacles as much as your heart desires, quite a lot of worryingly large piles of rat bones under them…

Every once in a while we crossed a junction with other sections of the sewers but most of them were walled off with planks or fences brought from above. There were quite a lot of pieces of meat hanging from them, signifying quite clearly that something tried to go through. I decided not to think about this too much as the ill air down here was sickening enough.

The way lead us over some placed planks, which went over one of the other sewer trenches which connected to this one. Every now and then we passed some small pipes which trickled filthy water into the trench. Suddenly Edmond stopped and pointed ahead.

"Headcrabs." He said and we looked towards the creatures in the near distance right under one of the light bulbs. I was dead sure that they looked back at us and started crawling towards us. The German aimed his SMG1 but Aposiopesis and I simultaneously halted him.

"That would be a waste of ammo." My friend said and I nodded. We aimed our guns and them and pulled the trigger. His gun fired but mine didn't . I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at it. It was loaded, and…the safety trigger was on. I switched it off and aimed again. I shot and the bullet hit right next to one of the headhumpers. I shot again and broke off one of the legs of the other, making it squeal or growl…or whatever headcrabs do to show that they are in pain. Narrowing my lips from frustration I focused a bit more and aimed again. This time managed to hit one of the headcrabs, killing it on the spot. In a few shots we killed off the rest and reloaded the guns.

"Not bad but when the Combine come, you won't have time for precision shooting." Edmond said, somewhat bitterly. I really had no idea what his problem was. Yes, we weren't as accurate as I gathered that we would be, considering the long hours and nights we used to spend playing shooters and games in general. We went on and as we passed the headcrabs we kicked them down the sewers.

Soon we reached another plank crossing but unfortunately this one was knocked down and there was a zombie without legs crawling down in the muck. What worried us most though, was that the wall that was keeping the unlit sector had collapsed down. I looked back down and saw the zombie's legs some distance down the canal.

"Great… Fucking zombies…" Edmond cursed and then went on murmuring in German as he looked around.

The escapees looked at him and nodded, then he looked towards the side of the canal which was obviously the route that we had to take, even though it was dark. I just hoped that the collapsed wall wasn't the work of a zombie but of sloppy work.

The German took his backpack off and rummaged through it. He tossed some ammo magazines to us and we stashed them in our pockets, then he gave Aposiopesis and me a flashlight and got up.

"Be careful." He said plainly and stood up before he headed into the dark area.

"You shoot, I'll take the suitcases." I said and nodded towards my friend.

"If you insist…" He handed me his suitcase and prepared his gun. I put the flashlight in my mouth, biting into it, trying not to touch it in any other way with lips, tongue or whatever. Getting some wicked disease now wouldn't be the best thing to do but I needed to see where I was going and that seemed like the best way. Aposiopesis looked at me then stopped, and opened one of the suitcases. He took out some of the clean pieces of clothes that we had, a bit tattered but clean, ripped some of it and handed it to me.

"Thanks." I replied after I took the flashlight out from between my teeth. I wrapped it in the cloth and bit on it again, more calmly.

"If I were you I would have tied it around my forehead rather than biting it, but…I guess it depends on what you want to do…"

I just shrugged my shoulders in response and we followed the three escapees and kept our ears perked up. Everything was silent and calm and the only real noise came from above, through the sewer covers. Every now and then I glanced up as we went on and could see the sky and hear voices. Cold air was descending from the shafts…clean air, but cold. It was biting our skin with its freshness.

Edmond stopped at a crossroad and looked around, shining his light in all directions. We needed to just get across, but this crossroad made it significantly harder. I left the suitcases down and walked up to him. Taking the flashlight of from between my teeth I looked down at the sewers. In this part they were all dried up and there was just a lot of old trash and cracked from the lack of water muck. Mostly pieces of cloth, some broken bottles, old shoes, glass, plastic, paper littered the bottom. Everything was generally piled along the edges of the roughly two meter deep trench, but it wasn't high enough to help us get back up at the other side. At least it wasn't high enough for me.

I turned a bit to the side, to look in the direction from which we came and my eyes widened as a headcrab launched itself toward me. I ducked reflectively and the creature overshot me, landing across on the other side of the crossing. Before anyone could say something there were gunshots and the creature growled for the last time. My heart was beating fast and I was suddenly very aware of our surroundings.

"That…was too close for comfort." I said and looked at Aposiopesis who was holding the gun.

"Are you fine, Necril?"

"Yes, yes…just shaken up…"

I cautiously peered back down and shined the light along the length of the dry canal. There was nothing dangerous anymore down there. Some shuffling sounds made me look back up towards the left side, where we would have had to go through if we couldn't cross. There were a lot of zombies there… A lot a lot of zombies. The gunshots had alarmed them and now they were lumping towards us.

"Fiddlesticks…" I murmured and Edmond looked at the other Germans. He started speaking and pointing at the yonder, explaining something quietly. I followed his gestures and looked at the places which he pointed towards. From what I could gather he was telling them that we are going to go down and just cross the dry canal, climb up across and get back to the main route. When he was done explaining he turned towards us.

"Yes, we got it." I said and he furrowed his eyebrows.

"But you said you didn't know German." He seemed displeased…almost angry, again.

"We don't. But you didn't use just German." Aposiopesis said and walked towards the rail, peering down as well.

"What?" He asked.

"Let's just go before the zombies get here." I ushered him and shined my light over the other way of the canal. It was safe as well.

I was the first who jumped over the rail and then down the small drop. The dry sewage cracked with a lot of noise and made a dust cloud rise. I covered my nose with the cloth that I used to hold the flashlight with and suppressed my cough and feeling of nausea. I couldn't believe how much this reeked even when dry. Aposiopesis handed down the suitcases and quickly followed me, followed by the escapees. The leader leapt over the fence and landed safely down.

"Let's go." He nodded towards one of the canals which was not the one that we needed to follow.

"But this is…" I started speaking but he just glared at me.

"Go!"

I sighed. I didn't like this but bit down on the flashlight, took the suitcases and followed him, Aposiopesis tightly behind me. We went on along the dry sewer, lightly running, making too much noise in my opinion. I didn't like this at all and I hoped that Edmond knew where he was going. The dirt beneath our feet cracked and dust came up in the air. Every now and then we stepped on bottles, which broke and cracked even more. I really hoped that there wouldn't be more zombies here.

Nothing changed for a long time. There were the occasional barnacles hanging from above, mostly dead, lots of trash and the monotone cracking of the dirt under our feet. The light coming from above was enough to help us see generally where we were going but without the flashlights we would have bumped into some of the barnacles, if nothing else.

I was worried and my heart was beating a bit faster than usual, my senses were sharpened and every so often I flanked up towards some imaginary or non-imaginary noises. I couldn't be at ease in these dark sewers. There were far too many things that could kill us down here.

Sometime later we came across a T junction and looked towards the up-sloped canal.

"Fuu~k…" Was the only word that came out of my mouth, distorted by the flashlight. There were some zombies there and they were made aware of this. But the biggest problem was that there were fast zombies.

A dreadful howl filled the air as we prepared to fight for our lives. I dropped the cases and reached for my gun just as the horrific creatures started charging down on us on all four. Edmond opened fire and Aposiopesis did too. Yellowish-green and red blood started coming out from the zombies as bright flashes and loud bangs filled the canal and echoed through it. We were shooting as fast as we could and as accurately as we could, aiming for the headcrabs. One of the fast zombies targeted me and started running towards me. I aimed at him but after two shots I ran out of bullets and my heart skipped a beat. Someone managed to get a headshot on it just before it jumped at me and it collapsed on the ground, its torso tumbling towards me. I reloaded with shivering hands and targeted the next nearest zombie.

The sight of the limping, open-chested monstrosities was morbid. Their moaning and the sight of the bloodied and eviscerated faces under the fallen headcrabs made me feel sick. But I didn't falter. I started reloading and something jumped on me from behind. I yelped in a muffled scream instinctively and bashed at it. It was one of the fast zombies. Apparently that strife had attracted some of the other zombies around and we were getting swarmed pretty fast.

The assailant howled dreadfully and started bashing at me, doing nothing but bruises and scratches, but even so the hits were quite painful and dangerous. I pushed it away and kicked its head in horror. My heart was beating faster than ever before. I took the wrench that I had and bashed at the creature as hard as I could as it launched itself towards me. I heard a loud cracking noise and it slumped over me, dead. But the headcrab wasn't dead. It released the corpse and the bony red head thumped down. I pushed the torso with disgust and looked for the headcrab. As I spotted it Aposiopesis filled it with several bullets and it died.

"Go. GO! Run!" Edmond said and kept on shooting at the incoming zombies. My friend pulled me on my feet and took one of the suitcases, going after Edmond.

"Come on, Necril!" He ushered me and I took the other case before dashing after him. I didn't need another invitation. To my surprise the flashlight was still in my mouth and I was incredibly happy with that… I ran after the others as more zombies awoke around us and started rising from the places where they had been laying for who knows how long. Every now and then we shot at some of the fast ones and crippled them at best.

We ran down towards the inversely sloped canal and made a right turn and headed towards the main trench. The zombies were lagging behind but we didn't slow down. The smell of wet sewage hit me and made me feel even sicker. In all honestly I had always through that I would be able to handle such situations with more guts. Alas, just as my accuracy, I wasn't as brave and as strong as I thought that I was. Even so, we survived with nothing more than some bruises, scratches and really dusty clothes.

Edmond headed towards a ladder on the side and climbed it, followed by us. He looked both ways before lowering down the gun. The escapees climbed after him, Aposiopesis at their back. I handed him the suitcase and then went up as well. My senses were still sharpened and I felt aware of far too many things.

"Are you ok?" Aposiopesis asked, with some concern. I took the flashlight out of my mouth and puffed.

"Yeah…shaken up…but ok… Are you ok?"

He nodded, showing that he was ok, and I put the cloth in my pocket and noticed that I had bitten down so hard on the flashlight that I had imprinted my teeth on the metal. I was very glad that I had that piece of cloth between me and the hardware. Braking my teeth would have been bad.

I looked down from where we came the dust was slowly settling but some zombies were already in sight. The fast one being almost at the ladder. We shot them down as fast as we could, as the monsters started climbing up. Their bodies fell lifeless down and the other zombies went on moving towards us, but were unable to use the ladder.

"I am not holding anything in my mouth ever again…" I stated and my voice trailed off.

"Let's go." Edmond commanded and headed towards the light of the main trench. I never felt so happy to see light before. Even the stench was not a bother. The old light bulbs protected by a loose net seemed like the beholders of freedom and salvation. We ran towards them and when we reached the loosely made wall, Edmond gave it a swift kick and it fell down. We crossed and we finally took a breather. The guys from the next station came into view, arms in hands, looking at us with some fear and confusion.

Edmond started talking to them and they rushed towards us. I looked at Aposiopesis and he looked back at me.

"This was very bad, you know…" I said quietly to him.

"Yeah. I am sure that no one heard that gunfight." He replied and looked up front.

"I am not sure if you are sarcastic or not, but I hope that you are because that's what I meant." We followed the others. "If the Overwatch are on to us…no doubt that this was heard."

"It was necessary." He replied shortly.

"I know that it was, I am not questioning that." I shook my head. "We should just be prepared to do something more than shooting for when things get messy."

"Well, we can be sure of one thing." He said and looked back. "You are right that it's not an "if" but a "when" situation… Now, are you sure that you are fine. You are bleeding a little bit."

I felt some blood on my face and rubbed off the tip, then looked at my finger.

"Yes, it's just a scratch." I belittled the problem and started walking after the German man. I had no idea if this was going to be the last escort but I really hoped that the others wouldn't involve zombies.

"You know, Necril, I thought that we'd be better shots than this." Aposiopesis said and I sighed; the same thought had gone through his mind as it did through mine some time ago. "Our reflexes seemed fast and all but…it was a bit too hard."

"Yes, I know. But then again…games are games and we don't have "auto-aim" in real life." We crossed another one of the plank-bridges.

"We should work on that, probably." I agreed. "Because, who knows…it might save our lives if we are able to kill that what wants to kill us before it kills us."

Aposiopesis scoffed.

"Quickly! More complex sentences!"

I just smiled in response as we reached the station of the guys who met us along the way.