011. Fair

Gordon wasn't sure if he knew the meaning of fairness. Things never seemed to balance themselves out for him. Sure, he'd fought alot of aliens and zombies just to survive, and that was expected with the way the world was now.

But now?

The scout car had broken down-- the engine was shot, or out of gasoline. He had managed to slow it to a stop near a pillar of stone thrusting up from the sand. Gordon was able to climb to the top, and there he now perched, watching the antlions mill around, hissing and clicking.

This was not fair.

Gordon chewed his tongue as the angry thought passed through his mind for the hundredth time. He held his shotgun close, picking off the antlions that strayed too close to him. His stomach was starting to growl, and the sun was beginning to slip over the watery horizon.

Below him, the antlions were starting to chew at the wheels of his scout car. Gordon fired a few rounds from the shotgun to scatter them off, careful not to strike the vehicle. He rubbed at his eyes behind his glasses, wondering again if he could reach the faraway house standing in the mist before the antlions tore him apart. Probably not.

He wasn't sure what he was waiting for anymore. At first he had hoped that the antlions would become tired of waiting for him to come down and move off. Instead, they had set up a veritable camp all around his perch. Before, they had attempted to jump up and knock him down, but over a dozen had failed and were now lying dead amongst their cohorts. They seemed to understand that trying to jump at his face wouldn't work, and now just waited, patiently.

A pair just below and to the right of him were either fighting or mating. He couldn't tell.

A crack of thunder overhead made Gordon jerk viciously in fear. He looked up just in time for a fat drop of rain to fall on his cheek.

Totally not fair.

012. Allergy

"Here, Dr. Freeman."

Gordon glanced over to see one of the rebels in his company leaning over to hand him something. They were stuck down deep, beneath a collapsed highway, waiting for the signal to move on.

Blinking, the physicist took a closer look. It was a health bar. Gordon grabbed it and gave a cursory view of the label, and then handed it back.

"No thank you. I'm allergic."

The rebel held the health bar in both hands, scrutinizing the ingredients. "To corn syrup?"

"Peanuts."

But the well-meaning youth persisted. "You know, this might be the last thing you'll get to eat for a long, long time."

Gordon gave him a wary look. "I'm allergic," he repeated, as if putting the words in a different tone would stick this time around.

Apparently the plan backfired. "But you're going to be hungry."

"I'll die if I eat that."

"Oh, oh! So our food isn't good enough for you, then?"

Gordon wanted to give the rebel a whack with the back of his pistol. He obviously wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.

Thankfully, the sight of a flare curving through the sky broke off any further arguments about the health bar, and they were off again.

013. Death

When Gordon had taken up smoking cigarettes at the age of nineteen, he remembered his father telling him he would die an early death. Two months later, he quit, disgusted with the taste and uninterested in the scene provided by the smokers on his college campus.

Now he was twenty-seven, which was still too early for any death-- yet here it was, staring him straight in the face.

The warmth of blood running down his back distracted him from how cold it was. A few gunshots had made their mark, as well as a half-dozen manhacks that had ambushed him in this underground hell.

Slumping in the stagnant water of the disused sewer, Gordon watched with vague interest as his blood created strange ribbonlike designs in the clear fluid. The HEV suit was talking into his ear, calm voice telling him that he was likely about to die.

A zombie was muttering somewhere, drawing his attention away from the abstract shapes painted beneath him.

Rocking uneasily to his feet, he took up his shotgun, heavy in his cold hands.

The gunshots echoed loudly around the enclosed stone space, but all Gordon could hear was his father, speaking to him over a Seattle rainstorm.

014. Table

It was made of the kind of cheap particleboard that you would find if you tore the wallpaper off of a trailer wall. Two of the legs were too short, causing it to wobble uncontrollably with as little as a glass of water placed on it. Some sort of lacquer had been painted on it to stop the wood from warping, and it was now cracking, turning yellow, falling apart in some places.

All of these things went unnoticed as Gordon crouched down behind the overturned table, loading his pistol. Gunshots splintered along the uneven surface, but did not break through.

Pulling a grenade from his side, Gordon lobbed it over. It was enough to distract the CP units as he peered over the edge of the wood, taking them out with his gun in the confusion. Trash and dust flew through the air as the grenade exploded, also taking out a sizable chunk from the opposite wall.

Afterward, Gordon picked up the furniture with his Gravity Gun and used it to kill a few more of the soldiers before it finally gave out, splintered, and fell apart.

015. Early

Dawn had just started to peer over the horizon when Alyx decided to wake Gordon from slumber. Leaning over, she gently shook his shoulder. Instead of awakening violently, like he had a tendency to do, he simply stretched unconsciously and blinked open his eyes.

"Morning," Alyx whispered. "Ready to go?"

He curled up closer into himself on the passenger seat-- although how that was even possible Alyx couldn't tell-- and screwed his eyes shut.

"Still tired," he murmured.

"It's still early, yet. We need to head off."

"Yeah."

A few moments passed where she thought he'd fallen back asleep, but then he carefully untangled his arms and legs from each other, got out of the car, and wandered behind a close-knit copse of trees.

He returned a few minutes later, a bit more awake this time, and slightly embarrassed to find he'd forgotten his crowbar in the car.

Alyx traded places with him and they set off again, Gordon reminding himself to take the first watch next time.

(A/N: Sorry that my updates are taking so long. Gordon seems like the kind of guy who'd have the luck to be allergic to peanuts. Also, 015 is a bit of a follow-up to 009, if you'd like to know.)