No, you're not crazy, here's a SECOND chapter up for you guys today, my lovely loyal readers.

Chapter 11 λ

The forest creeps in on both sides of the tracks. When the plates are picked clean, they're thrown from the windows into the cover of the woods. The crate is disbanded into single boards which follow. The rebels settle back down for the rest of the journey, sleepy with their full bellies and rhythmic sway of the train.

"Someone is trying to open the door." Mikhail says calmly, and suddenly everyone is alert again. They turn their attention to the handle of the door which leads to the next car. Someone is rattling it from the outside.

"Get back!" Olivia hisses, pushing Adrian behind a stack of crates. She cocks her gun and trains it on the door, and so do most of the others. Eventually whoever's standing behind the door gives up; an arm smashes through the window and turns the handle from the inside. The door swings open. A CP jumps in, and the shooting starts.

Metrocops keep flooding in, jumping between the cars from a step built above the hook mechanism that keeps the carriages together. Adrian gets his own SMG ready but decides not to waste any ammo with his terrible aim. He looks at the sky through the high windows; the train appears to be slowing down.

The first few CPs have pistols, but the ones who come after are equipped with SMGs. Adrian sees one load a rocket, but doesn't have time to warn the others before it's fired.

The rocket lands around the centre of the car, and the world briefly flashes white, then turns black with smoke and dust. The firing doesn't stop. When the dust clears, the tracks are visible through a large hole in the floor. Most of the crates around the hole have disintegrated, and splinters of wood and plastic lunchbox fly around like snowflakes. The train bounces and shakes as it speeds up again, and anything which falls through the hole is instantly crushed, including CP bodies.

The hole begins to widen with the strain. The CPs stop jumping into the carriage as it almost rips in half. Mikhail wrestles the large sliding doors open. "Everyone must jump!" He shouts above the racket and wind. Blair immediately rushes to the doorway, hastily makes the sign of the cross and jumps through. Then Adrian feels himself behind pushed towards the doorway, and sees Basil's skinny frame approach from the other side. They both pause in front of the door, waiting for the other to jump first. Adrian jumps, and Basil is pushed out at the same time. They collide in mid-air and soar for a couple of seconds, before smashing into the floor and skidding a few metres.

Adrian scrambles against a tree to help himself up, struggling for breath because Basil's knee connected with his stomach. He sees two more figures fly out of the train and towards them, hand in hand. The train is already some distance away. They crash into the floor and he breaks out in a run towards them, and hears Basil follow.

When he reaches them, Sylvia is kneeling next to Walt, who's weakly clawing the ground in a futile attempt to get up. The lower part of his face, his neck and the collar of his uniform are all bloody.

"What happened to'im?" Yells Basil.

"He got hit in the neck!" She answers, pouring an entire medflask on his throat and wrapping it hurriedly with a bandage. She holds the bandage down and screams at Adrian to get another one from her backpack. He finds a rolled up bandage in her medic bag, but an explosion makes it fly from his hand. Up the road, the train is half hidden around a bend, but he sees the last few cars twist and slam into each other with an almighty crash. The train is wrenched off the tracks as it falls over.

Adrian picks up the rolled bandage and hands it back to Sylvia, who's frantically trying to stop Walt's bleeding. He chokes and gurgles, trying to breathe.

"We shouldn't stay out in the open…" Basil says, and as if to prove his point, a little troop of metrocops come running around the bend of trees in the distance. Sylvia clambers to her feet and tries to get Walt to stand up. "It's no use!" Basil shouts at her, as the CPs load their guns. She says she can't just leave him there, so Basil hoists Walt over his shoulder and prepares to run.

"No!" She screams again. "He'll bleed out!"

Basil wants to point out that he's going to do so anyway, but he hastily shifts Walt's body, carrying him on his back instead. Sylvia crosses Walt's arms around Basil's neck, as bullets start kicking up little clouds of dust and leaves around their feet. Adrian runs into the forest, trying to find the easiest path for Basil. Sylvia follows last, occasionally letting off a few rounds in the CPs' direction.

Adrian weaves through the forest, eventually coming to a little stream. He sprints across the freezing ankle-high water, and impatiently turns to wait for the others. Basil stomps across the water, staggering across slippery pebbles, and Sylvia follows, turning every few seconds to look back.

They keep moving till Adrian stops short. Directly in front of him is a little ridge, around four metres high. He glances back at Basil, trying to judge whether the jump would be too dangerous for Walt. A voice out of nowhere shouts at him to run left and hide beneath the cliff. He looks around for the voice, which curses and tells him to hurry up. Adrian runs left, arriving at a slope of rocks and soil which leads down beneath the overhang. He runs down, and shelters beneath the ledge. Basil skids to a halt and they sit Walt against the wall.

They hear the pound of the CPs' feet as they stop at the edge of the overhang, directly above them, then the crack of one bullet, and a metrocop suit flat-lines. The other CPs shout and fire their guns in random directions, but they don't know where to aim and eventually only one is left. It tries to sprint away, but falls down dead a moment later.

When everything goes quiet, Adrian tries to climb up to look over the overhang, but his footholds keep crumbling. Basil weaves his hands to make a step, and gives Adrian a boost up. He peers over the ledge, and sees the dead metrocops.

"Is that all of them?" The voice asks, and the leaves in a nearby tree rustle.

"There's, uh --one, two, three, four-- five dead CPs. Is that all?" He asks Sylvia. She looks up from where she's kneeling next to Walt and nods. "Yeah, that's it. Thanks, Blair, you really came through for us."

Blair climbs down the tree branches, and falls the last metre. "Yeah well, it was in my own interest to kill them; I couldn't live up that tree forever." He says, brushing the dirt and leaves off his clothes. Adrian climbs over the ledge, and Sylvia helps Basil lift Walt's body onto his back.

"What happened to him? Is he--" Blair jerked his thumb across his throat.

"No, but he will be if we don't find any help." Basil says.

"What about the others? The train crashed!" Says Adrian.

Blair thinks about this for a while. "We can't go look for them. We need to find help for… uh… him, and for ourselves."

"But what if they need us?" He turns to Sylvia. "You saw those CPs, they came from near the train, what if--"

"If the CPs got them then there's nothing we can do without the risk of getting ourselves captured. And if they're dead then we'll be killed for nothing!" Blair says.

"If you won't fine, but I'm going back--"

"Adrian! Shut up and listen! We can't do anything now, they just have to help themselves, and believe me, if they can't help themselves then I don't know what you can do for them. Now we need to move because the GPSs in their suits—" Blair kicks the head of one of the dead metrocops "—will lead the Combine right to us. Alright?"

Adrian is about to object again, but Basil says that Walt's heavy and could they please get a move on, so he gives up.

"Now, I think I saw something that way," Blair says, pointing in front of him and to the right. "But I can't be sure till I have a better look. We should go that way anyway, till I find a tall enough tree." The others agree glumly and they start walking. Their feet are numb from their soaked shoes. Sylvia's face is completely white with shock, as is Walt's from blood-loss. Basil is looking extremely uncomfortable as Walt's blood soaks through the collar of his blue shirt, but he says nothing.

Blair finds a suitable tree and climbs it swiftly, and looks through the crosshairs on his SMG with their slight magnification. A few moments later he's back down. "Yep, there's a town thataway." He says, pointing directly in front of them. "Doesn't seem to have any combine presence, but you can't be sure. I wish you still had that sniper rifle with you."

"Mikhail was carrying it." Sylvia says quietly, wrapping her arms around her sides.

They walk in silence for about half an hour.

"Did anyone hear that?" Blair hisses.

"No… wait, yes!" Adrian says, listening hard. "What is that--?"

"Its coming this way, get ready--!"

A shape breaks out of the bushes and sprints towards them. It's a large deer. They jump out of the way as it gallops past, bucking in an attempt to dislodge a headcrab from it's back. They stare at the spot where it vanished back into the vegetation for a few seconds, then Blair places a foot on a tree trunk and pulls off a branch about as long as his arm. He holds it in front of him like a baseball bat, in case any other headcrabs appear.

It's around noon when they reach a small dirt track, covered with short grass from disuse. The track is a welcome break from the forest floor, being relatively smooth and even, especially for Basil, who's tired from carrying Walt's dead weight. The track curves around a thick ridge of trees, then opens out into a large clearing surrounding a small town.