PλRT TWO
–HOSTILE TERRITORY–

"I really wasn't looking forward to going back underground," Eric muttered as he led the way down the tunnel, magnum in hand. As much as he'd been hoping for one, there hadn't been any kind of assault rifle. Really, there'd just been some ammo for the pistols and enough shotgun shells to give him and Vanessa another full load. They'd also gotten her a bulletproof vest. They'd tracked down the maintenance tunnel entrance, which was a grate in the floor that Eric had had to use the crowbar to bash in because it was rusted shut.

And then they'd descended, finding themselves in a narrow, dank, concrete tunnel.

He thought about what he'd just said. It was true, he supposed, but honestly he wasn't sure what he was feeling at the moment. Eric Bishop was adrift, like a fighter pilot who'd ejected and was floating down before the parachute kicked in, or a boat that had slipped its moorings during a storm and was being tossed among the waves.

No thoughts seemed to be able to take hold.

The Marines were here, and they intended to murder him, and his new friends. And his old friends, too, if any of them were still alive.

They intended to murder them all.

This had big ramifications, and made the situation a hell of a lot more difficult to get through. Going up against monsters and aliens was one thing. Simultaneously going up against the United States Marine Corps was another.

Mainly, he was just…

He was having a lot of difficulty with the fact that they were straight up murdering everyone. And yet, even as he thought about it, even as he wanted to reject the notion, he knew he couldn't. And as he thought this, Steven voiced part of it.

"I don't believe it, man. How could they do that?" he said.

"It's their job," Eric replied.

"What? No it the hell isn't! Their job is to protect United States citizens! Not butcher them like cattle, man!"

Eric stopped suddenly and turned around. "No, Steven," he said, staring hard at them both, who had stopped as well, staring back at him with stricken eyes. "Their job is to follow orders. Whatever those orders might be. That's what they train us to do. They don't train us to be free thinkers. In fact, they train us out of it. Our job is to follow orders, plain and simple."

"You keep saying 'us' and 'our'," Vanessa said.

"Would you have done it?" Steven asked. "If they'd ordered you..."

"I want to say no, but...actually, you know what? No, I wouldn't. Why do you think I got kicked out?"

"You were a Marine?" Vanessa pressed.

"I was," he replied. "I refused a direct order. I don't want to get into it."

"How'd you get a job here, then?" she asked.

"Friend of mine got me in. I don't want to talk about it, but I do want to make this real. If we see them...we're going to have to kill them. You understand that, right? I need you to understand that. We're not just fighting monsters or aliens or whatever they are anymore. We will be fighting human beings. And you will have to murder them, because if you don't, they will murder you. And I need to know if you can handle that."

"I can," Vanessa said quietly.

"I-I...I don't know, man," Steven muttered, looking paler than ever. "I mean, we didn't actually see them-"

"Steven," Eric said, raising his voice, forcing the young tech to look at him. "If they see you, they will kill you. They will gun you down in cold blood."

"But how-"

Eric sighed. "I'm not good with words, but I'll tell you two quotes that I heard to kind of sum it up. The first is from Stephen King. 'It's a blood on the floor kind of world.' And the other comes from Rambo. 'When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing.' Most people don't know it, but it's shockingly easy to murder someone. I don't mean the technicality of it, how frail the human body is. I mean making yourself do it. We're primal creatures. Not everyone will kill when push comes to shove, but a lot of people will. Most people just don't ever have to get to that point. And what do you think they teach us to do? Kill, because our job might require it. They teach us restraint, but they also teach us to kill. So...yes. They are fully capable of killing us all. They've already gotten started. So...can you handle that, Steven?"

"I...I don't know," he admitted.

"Fine. If the shooting starts, hide. I don't want you getting killed or shot." He turned around and resumed his journey at a brisk pace. At least he felt more focused now.

"I'm sorry," Steven said.

Eric sighed. "It's not your fault, Steven. I'm not mad at you or disappointed in you. This isn't fair, you shouldn't be in this situation. It's not like I want to murder anyone. I'd happily go through my entire life without ever taking someone's life. But that's not realistic, in my shoes. So...I really do mean it. If you can't bring yourself to open fire on them, hide if at all possible. Don't think you need to be brave and prove yourself or anything like that. This isn't a movie. I'm not secretly challenging you or something. I genuinely mean it: hide when you see them."

"Okay...thanks," he murmured.

"You're welcome."

The tunnel came to an end shortly after that in the form of a ladder. Eric mounted and climbed it, wincing. His bicep was really hurting now. He wondered if he'd pulled a stitch. Probably. But it wasn't like he had a lot of choice. Reaching the top, he opened up the hatch and poked his head out. Luck found him again: they'd come to a disused storage room with a closed door. The three of them extracted themselves from the tunnel and Eric opened up the door. He frowned at what he saw: a forest of barnacle tongues hung from the ceiling beyond.

"Ugh," Vanessa muttered. "We'll have to be very careful."

"Yeah," Eric murmured. "This first area should be the running and jumping and climbing portion. We'll go through, nice and easy."

"Don't let those tongues touch you," Vanessa warned.

Eric nodded and set off first. He saw a fairly clear path through the tongues and began to traverse it, wanting to get this part over with. Then again, what part of today hadn't he wanted to just get over with? Well, the very few breaks he'd received, he supposed. Eric felt his whole body tense up as he moved through the hanging tongues. There was a bad smell to them, an awful meaty, organic smell that was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. It was awful. But at least they weren't running at him or shooting energy or spitting acid.

This first area was just the ingress to the hazard course itself. If it was this infested already, he was afraid of what might be waiting for them in the rest of the building. He suddenly wondered how these things had even gotten up there. Did someone, or something, put them there? Did they teleport in? How did these things function? Questions for later. Or never, probably. Finally, he came through the sea of tongues.

After doing a quick sweep of the area beyond and finding nothing, he turned and checked the progress of the others. Vanessa was right behind him, just about through. Steven was moving slower. Eric frowned, worried about the kid.

And then he brushed up against one of the tongues.

There was a wet squelching sound and the tongue suddenly snapped up, curling around his arm. He screamed and suddenly was being dragged up, towards the ceiling.

"Help me!" he screamed.

Vanessa turned around, but Eric was already aiming his magnum. He selected the proper flesh mound and squeezed the trigger. The bullet exploded out of the barrel and into the mound, which basically detonated. The tongue went slack, releasing Steven, who hit the floor on his ass. He started to get up.

"Slow!" Eric shouted. "Don't touch the other ones."

Steven froze, then looked around him at the other tongues, then finished getting cautiously to his feet. Vanessa joined Eric and they watched in rapt attention until Steven had joined them as well. "Sorry," he said, slowly releasing the tension in his muscles.

"It's fine. Just...be more careful. Come on," Eric replied.

He led them out of the lobby and down a short corridor, then into the transitional area before the actual course itself. He was familiar enough with hazard courses to remember what this was, basically a place where you could stretch and prepare. It also granted access to what would be the easiest, most direct route through the course. There was a line of windowed rooms that ran alongside the course itself, where the scientists or administrators or whoever it was watched and judged. It led right to the other end.

And, of course, it was locked.

"Steven, can you get this open?" he asked, indicating the door.

"Uh...hold on," he murmured, crouching by the control panel next to the door, which was a bit more high-tech than the usual wooden doors that had simple knobs. Black Mesa was such a patchwork facility. He spent five minutes working on it with the small toolkit he'd been carrying around with him. While he did, Eric took the opportunity to poke around the bathroom. Nothing there worthwhile. He stepped back out and after another few minutes, Steven sighed suddenly and stood up.

"I'm sorry, I can't get through. Maybe if I had another hour or so..."

Eric heaved a frustrated sigh. "We could get through the whole course in that amount of time. Whatever, it doesn't matter. We'll just do this the hard way."

He left the room through the only other doorway, coming to the climbing portion of the hazard course.

"I hate this place," Steven muttered as he stared at the obstacle course.

"It's not so bad," Eric replied as he set off into the chaotic, multi-leveled area.

"Says the ex-Marine who works out like all the time."

"Okay, that's a fair point."

As he began to walk up the ramp that led to the course, something gurgled to his right. Whirling, he raised his pistol and fired as a headcrab launched itself at him from where it was hidden behind a piece of the obstacle course. The bullet hit true and flung it back the way it had come, splattering it all over the wall. "Holy crap, you are a quick shot," Steven said.

"Like I said before," Eric replied, and kept going.

Up ahead, he could hear more gurgling. He hesitated. "You two wait here. Let me clear it first. I think there's more of them hidden up there."

"Fine by me," Steven said.

Eric finished moving up a ramp that led to a platform and then surveyed the area beyond. There were pipes to crawl through and more platforms to climb up and jump across. He sighed and then started going about it in a far different way than he normally did. A different set of skills was being tested this time. He worked his way across the area, trying to check out as many little niches and nooks and crannies as he could, hunting for more of the lurking headcrabs, as he definitely heard more of them.

And more he found.

By the time he reached the end of the room, he'd emptied his magnum twice over.

"Okay, come on over but be careful. I might've missed some!" he called as he put another quick-load of bullets into the cylinder and snapped it shut. Another corridor awaited him ahead. He moved into it, deciding to perform some quick reconnaissance while they navigated the area. It ended a few meters ahead in a sharp right turn and he took it, moving cautiously. Up ahead was, as he predicted, the shooting range. He was really hoping there was going to be a place to restock on ammo. They were encountering monsters at a much higher rate now.

Speaking of which…

As he moved closer to the shooting range, an alien slave suddenly walked into view at the end of the corridor. Cursing, as it had clearly noticed him immediately, he took aim. As he fired, splattering the thing's viscera all over the place, a second one ran into view and started charging up its attack. He shifted aim and squeezed the trigger once more at about the exact same time it released its bolt of green energy. His aim was true and his shot was sure.

So was the alien slave's.

It took a bullet right in the middle of its big red eye, and he took a bolt of energy straight in the chest. Eric cried out as he was flung backwards, the sheer force of the blast sending him stumbling and smacking painfully into the wall there. Energy crackled across the vest and he felt a brief jolt sizzle through his body.

"What's happening?!" Vanessa called.

"Just..." he groaned, clenching his teeth, his whole body reacting to the surge of alien energy. It felt awful, but he knew he'd survive. Probably. The vest had taken the brunt of the blast and wasn't all that conductive. By the time he managed to push himself back up off the wall he was leaning against, Vanessa and Steven had finished navigating the course and were approaching.

"What happened?" she asked again.

"Alien slave," he replied. "Got me in the chest. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And we don't really have time for a checkup. Come on. Shooting range is next," Eric replied, and set off once again.

The others trailed in his wake. This time, he was more cautious as he stepped into the room beyond. No more alien slaves in the immediate area, but there were definitely signs of struggle. Bullet holes tattooing the walls, blood stains, several Marine corpses mixed in with alien slaves. They kept going, moving through the first shooting gallery, then a second one, where they encountered a collection of zombies, Marine zombies, milling about. Eric and Vanessa raised their weapons and opened fire on the herd of monsters.

He emptied his pistol again and reloaded his last collection of bullets for it.

"Obviously they had a big presence here," he murmured as he looked around the second shooting range. It was set up similarly to basically all the others he'd seen so far: a long concrete room with booths of wood near one end. Although the Marines had torn down several of the booths, opening up a rough doorway that granted easy access to the rest of the room, which was about sixty or seventy feet long. Here, they had set up what might have been a temporary command post. There were close to two dozen corpses spread out, a mix of Marines, alien slaves, and zombies, with a sprinkling of headcrabs and even a few houndeyes.

"They must have been hit hard," Steven murmured. "God, it reeks in here."

"It does," Eric agreed. "Start searching the bodies. Find whatever you can."

They set to it and Eric moved deeper into the room. The place was a chaotic mess of foldout tables and chairs and shelves and crates. He imagined a few dozen Marines hustling around, getting it all broken out of crates and set up quickly, trying to get on top of the situation as fast as possible. The tables were scattered with radio equipment, tools, spare parts, half-eaten meals, papers, guns, ammo, knives, and a random collection of other things.

He found a Desert Eagle. Actually, he found a few. After a moment's hesitation, he abandoned the revolver for the Eagle. The revolver was nice to have, but he imagined ammo would probably be scarce, whereas clearly it was the sidearm of choice for these guys, and he also imagined that he'd be seeing a lot more of the Marines. Although if at all possible, he'd prefer not to. In this moment, however, he was at least happy.

This place was a goldmine, a field of fresh death, ripe for harvest.

"Who wants a Desert Eagle?" he asked, holding up a second sidearm.

"I barely trust myself with this thing," Steven said, lightly tapping the pistol in its holster on his belt.

"I'll take it," Vanessa said. She joined him and accepted the weapon.

"It kicks like a mule," he said as she crouched and began detaching another holster from a dead Marine.

"Noted," she replied.

He continued his search and managed a decent haul: six magazines of ammo for the Eagle, a combat knife, another full load of shotgun shells, a working flashlight, and a pair of fragmentation grenades. No assault rifles, though. The few that he did find were all damaged in one way or another. Once everything was secure, they left the derelict and bloodied military outpost behind.

"This," Eric said as he ignored the rest of the hazard course and instead opened up a door at the back, "is where we need to go next. There's another maintenance tunnel we need to take that will cut through a lot of BS and drop us at the freight yards."

"Man, it's dark," Steven muttered.

"This should fix that," Eric said, reaching out as he spied a series of light switches. He flicked the first one. It let out a sharp, resounding click, but failed to deliver any of the promised light. Frowning, he tried the next one, and the next one. "Crap."

"Power must be out," Vanessa murmured.

"That's bad. We need power to be on in this section. We have to take another elevator down to the maintenance area..." He pulled out his flashlight and turned it on, then pointed it down the hallway ahead of him. Something lay at the end. He studied it, and realized he was looking at a dead Marine. "They came this way..."

"Maybe they had a similar idea," Vanessa said.

"That means they might have some knowledge on it...hold on." He backtracked quickly to the outpost and tracked down what he'd seen earlier: a map of the building. Grabbing it, and another pair of flashlights, he returned to the others and placed it flat against the floor. They all crouched over it. "Here's us now," he said, pointing, then dragged his finger over to another portion of the area. "There's the elevator. And here is a generator. I'm guessing that's what they were going for."

"And obviously they ran into something in there," Steven muttered.

"Obviously," Eric agreed. "But we have to go this way." He handed them each a flashlight. "It's this or a lot more surface walking, caught in the middle of two sides who want to kill us as much as they want to kill each other."

Steven sighed. "Yeah. This just feels like...a horror game, but this part is honestly terrifying and I just don't want to do it."

"Like that level in Dead Space where the Hunter first starts coming after you?"

"Yes!" Steven said, his eyes lighting up. "Exactly like that!"

"It sucks, but we've gotta do it," Eric said, and Steven sighed again and nodded. "This is the shortest route between here and the generator, and the generator and the lift. Memorize it."

He took his own advice and memorized the route. It was, at least, decently simple. Down the initial corridors, then through the second door on the right in a big room that seemed to serve as a central nexus. And there was the generator. From there, a few corridors that snaked away to the left would lead to the elevator.

"Let's go," he said, folding up the map and pocketing it, just in case.

"What actually is this place?" Steven muttered as Eric began to lead them down the initial corridor.

"Storage. What else?" he replied.

"Half of Black Mesa is storage, I swear to God," Vanessa muttered.

They stepped over the dead Marine, as well as a pair of dead zombies not too far away. Judging by the claw marks, (and the dead creatures), it was obvious what had killed him. He said as much to the others and pulled out his Desert Eagle, holding it in one hand while gripping the flashlight with the other. Stepping over the zombie corpses, he came to the end of the hallway and stood at the threshold of the larger room. Somewhere, a zombie moaned. Eric played his light quickly across the big room. Boxes and shelves huddled along the perimeter, but he could see no hostiles. No living ones, anyway. Dead bodies from Marines and zombies lay scattered across the metal plate flooring, each in their own pool of shiny blood.

"Come on," he whispered, setting off for the second door to the right. "I'm going to be counting on you to get this going, Steven."

"I'll go as fast as I can," Steven murmured in reply.

They reached the door and he opened it cautiously. Or tried to. At first he thought it was locked, but then he realized something was leaning against it. Grunting with effort, he shoved it open, and at last it gave with the sound of something shifting around beyond. He stood at the end of a short alcove, a dead Marine at his feet, and a dead zombie further along. The Marine must have taken too much damage, tried to run, then passed out from blood loss against the door after killing the zombie. What an awful place to die.

"Stay here," Eric murmured, and moved down the alcove.

He carefully cleared the small room beyond, but the only thing it held was the generator itself. He came back out. "Steven, do your job."

"On it," he whispered, and disappeared into the gloom.

Eric looked at Vanessa. "Will you keep watch?"

"What are you going to do?"

"A little recon, see if the way to the elevator is clear," Eric replied.

"Fine. Don't take too long."

"I won't. Believe me, I don't want to be alone. This place is so goddamned creepy," he muttered, looking around again.

The flashlights didn't do a lot to push back the midnight sea of shadows around them. The place had him jumpy and he felt the urge to keep progressing. So that's what he did, moving over to the entrance that would take him to the elevator. He didn't get very far. Maybe a dozen steps into the hallway, he suddenly caught movement at its end, and a zombie shuffled into sight. Muttering a curse, he raised his pistol, then hesitated. Maybe he should wait before firing off a round and alerting all the other potential hostiles in the area-

The zombie saw him (smelled him? It didn't have eyes...did it?) and let out a loud moan, then started coming right for him, arms raised.

"Crap," he muttered, and popped off a shot.

The pistol did its job, putting a decent sized hole into the headcrab latched onto the poor bastard's face, and the zombie dropped like a bag of bricks. Suddenly, from ahead and behind, he began to hear wailing moans.

"Crap!" he hissed.

Another zombie came into view at the end of the hall, and another, and another. He fired off another few shots while simultaneously backing up, trying to get back to the main room. The second zombie went down near the first, and then the next two had their brains splattered all over the walls. "Left!" Vanessa yelled at him as he reentered the main room. Spinning left, Eric barely managed to get his pistol up in time and snap off a shot as another zombie wearing tattered camo came for him. Unfortunately, as he put it down, he saw that a dozen more had shown up.

"You really kicked up a goddamned hornet's nest!" Vanessa snapped, then fired off her shotgun, decapitating a zombie coming from the other direction. Eric didn't respond, instead aiming and firing off the last few shots in his pistol. As he hit the eject button and went to reload, he dropped his flashlight. Cursing and abandoning it for now, he slapped a fresh magazine in and opened fire once more. The zombies advanced on him in the flashes of his muzzle flare, reaching for him with long-fingered hands, moaning and stumbling and mindless. He emptied the pistol a second time, listening to Vanessa behind him as she ran through her shotgun shells, and then she joined him in firing off her own Desert Eagle.

Eric was trying to not to panic, but this was a pretty stressful situation. The darkness, the wild flashing and loud banging of the pistols sounding off, the moaning of the zombies as they advanced with a relentless determination, the way the darkness seemed to create a shell of claustrophobia. It all pressed in on him and he began missing his shots. Eric ran through another two magazines in the Eagle, his hands shaking, and as the gun clicked empty again, the last zombie in his field of vision dropped dead, shot through its malformed head.

He spun around as he grabbed for another magazine, hunting for more. As he did, Vanessa fired off another shot and dropped the last zombie. She was standing a little inside of the alcove that led to the generator. In the wan light of their flashlights, they stared at each other, breathing heavily, eyes wide and wild.

"I-I think that's all of them," she said.

"Yeah," Eric replied. Suddenly, all the lights flared to life. He cried out in shock and blinked rapidly, trying to get his vision back.

"Is...is it okay out there?" Steven asked.

Eric took another moment to look around as he finished reloading. "Um...yeah. Come on, let's get the hell out of here."

Vanessa emerged into the main room, and Steven joined her a moment later. "Holy crap," he whispered, looking around at all the dead zombies.

"You okay?" Vanessa asked.

"Yeah...yeah. Just a little...that was a bit much."

"You need a break?"

He shook his head. "No. Um...I need some air, I think. Let's just keep going. I'll feel better once we're back outside. Hopefully."

She just nodded and fell silent.

After another long moment, Eric silently began heading for the elevator.