Tuesday, 7:47 A.M.- Thirty Miles North of Albuquerque, New Mexico

Barney Calhoun fell.

Moments earlier, he had been jerking at the trigger of a pistol with no bullets in a panic, as he raced through black clouds of smoke. His eyes were on the goal, the first leg of an impossible race, the edge of the road. But as he ran, the goal was suddenly blocked out out by a shimmering green ring literally inches from his face. When he came to his senses (which was probably a few seconds later), he found himself twenty feet above the top of a mesa. It was not until he had fallen fifteen feet that he realized he was not going to touch down onto the top of the mountain.

He missed the top by a foot and fell on, watching the sheer wall of the mesa roll past his field of vision at an increasing pace. He flailed his arms about in a desperate attempt to touch the wall, but it was no use. He fell like a dead weight.

It was not until the wall began sloping away into the flat desert that he could touch the wall. He reached out with his right hand, but in the few seconds that contact was made, Barney's palm was nearly torn off. He kicked with his feet to touch the wall, with an unexpected success. The feet touched, but they only succeeded in tearing away a blinding stream of rubble from the fragile rock. He fell on.

As the ground grew steadily closer, he forced himself not to panic but to watch out for any other means of survival. He noted again the sloped foot of the mesa. If he could just roll as he landed...

The ground came quickly, and before Barney could rethink his chances, he struck the ground, turning his body and beginning to roll down the foothill. He survived shattered legs, but hitting the ground was far harder than he expected. He botched the rest of the performance, and found himself tumbling head over heels, breaking away chunks of rock, scraping against pools of scree, and colliding with unforgiving yucca plants and cacti. When he came to a stop in a cloud of dust, the pain overwhelmed the urge to lift his face off the already hot ground, and he lay there, motionless.

Tuesday, 7:46 A.M.- One Mile Southeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico

Alfonso drove like a man being calm under pressure, but in reality, his grip on the steering wheel was moist, and his eyes alone were watching the road while his mind was elsewhere.

What the talk show host, Bob, interpreted as a slow morning, Alfonso interpreted as a grim sign of the unexpected. Given the forcefulness of the attack on Carrizozo, a small town in reality, Alfonso thought that the aliens had concentrated all their forces on it. But if Albuquerque was already a ghost town, and contact with the city was perfectly fine the night before, it meant two things. One, Carrizozo was not the only town attacked. Two, the alien force was much larger than anticipated.

As Alfonso neared the city, his worst fears were confirmed. A green sign noting nearby motels, gas stations and restaurants was knocked down, while a car lay overturned yards away. The car was undisturbed; no police officers had come to assess the scene, and no paramedics had attempted to free any survivors.

Alfonso brought the car to a carefully quiet halt. Ahead about two hundred yards, a group of vortigaunts and houndeyes were crossing the road. Behind them, keeping them in check, was a hulking garg, who barked orders with a booming voice. Alfonso slouched in his seat.

Suddenly, a houndeye stopped moving, its eye fixed on Alfonso's car. With a morbidly joyful chirp, the houndeye began galloping his way.

Oh shit, Alfonso thought.

The garg roared and stomped the ground with its left foot, elevating the police car for a moment. The houndeye turned around, and the garg spoke at it in an angry, alien tongue. Briefly, the houndeye looked back at Alfonso's car, then it returned to its place in the ranks. Moments later, the group was gone.

Alfonso sat up. He placed his hands on the steering wheel again, carefully turned the car 180 degrees, and slammed his foot on the gas pedal until it would go down no more.

Tuesday, 8:01 A.M.- Thirty Miles North of Albuquerque, New Mexico

For a long time, Barney stared lazily at the dirt inches from his face with unfocused, non-shifting eyes. It wasn't until the pain of the burning and bumpy ground became worse than pain elsewhere did he try to get up.

The process was painful. He tried pushing himself onto his feet with his arms, but a sudden sharp pain in his left arm forced him to stop; the arm was broken. He rolled over, only to realize how painful both his back and his feet felt.

He finally got to his feet, swaying like a drunk, reaching out to a nearby boulder to steady himself. He screamed like a madman when, in his forgetfulness, he put half his body weight on his left arm when reaching the boulder.

Cradling his left arm with his right, Barney scanned the horizon. He was sure he had been taken someplace else by the portal, but where? Had he been placed in the middle of the desert, miles from any road?

But in the distance, to the west, he imagined that he could see a road. Part of him said, Forget it. It's just a mirage. The other part of him said, Screw it. I'll try anyways.

So on he walked, bearing a broken arm that was becoming increasingly painful, limping with one sprained ankle, wincing against the throbbing pain of cuts caused by yucca blades and of cactus needles lodged deep in his flesh. Then, suddenly, a new pain hit him. He was thirsty. Incredibly so, now that he was being hit by one hundred degree weather. All the while, he kept his eyes on that road.

When he was a mile or so away, he imagined seeing a green truck driving down the road. He picked up the pace, ignoring the pain, fueled by the sudden chance of his survival. He made good distance, covering half a mile, but the truck was passing, and the realization that he wouldn't make it hit him as hard as any truck would.

"Stop," he croaked. Again, louder, "Stop! Stop the truck!" The truck drove on. He fell to his knees and screamed so loud that his lungs burned, "Hey! Stop! I'm out here! Help me! Stop the goddamned truck and HELP ME!"

With a screech, the truck stopped.

Tuesday, 8:25 A.M.- Eighteen Miles North of Albuquerque, New Mexico

Cal shuffled lazily down the road, keeping his eyes on his feet to avoid losing the desire to go any further. He knew he was an impossibly far walking distance from civilization. He just didn't want to know know it.

The distant squawk of buzzards kept him mildly entertained. Perhaps they were feasting on the remains of a coyote's overnight feast; or, perhaps they were harvesting the results of the disaster by feasting on an unfortunate victim of the aliens. In the depths of his slipping mind, the answer to this question was more urgent than finding civilization.

He suddenly realized that the squawks of buzzards were not all he could hear. There was also the sound of an engine in high gear. And the sound was growing louder.

Cal lifted his eyes to the seemingly infinite desert ahead and saw a green spot on the shimmering horizon. When it was closer, he recognized the details, the insignia, and the color of a U.S. Army jeep and truck.

"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms and going into a jog. "Over here! Hey! Hey!"

Are you so urgent to give them the alien's message? His mind questioned suddenly. Cal slowed to a stop and let his arms drop. But the truck kept coming.

"No," Cal said aloud. "I will not give them the message."

The jeep came to a stop ten feet in front of him, and the truck stopped slightly farther off. Cal walked swiftly with a grin on his face. "Oh, man," he said. "You have no idea how glad..."

"Stand back!" the driver shouted, whipping out a pistol. Cal stared dumbly at the pistol. Quickly, the driver was joined by several soldiers, all pointing armed AK-47s at Cal's chest.

"Whoa, whoa," Cal said, raising his hands and stepping back. "I'm not..."

"Check him!" someone said. "He may be contaminated!"

Cal's eyes widened. "What?" he said. But it happened more quickly than his mind could process. The soldiers grabbed him with iron grips, forcing him to lay down on a stretcher in the back of the truck. They stripped off his shirt, stuck needles in him, checked his breath, his heart rate, his breathing. When they brought out an anal probe, Cal's eyes grew wide and he struggled to get up. The soldiers roughly pushed him down, and someone said, "Sedate him!" A final needle was stuck into him. His mind grew cloudy, and the world drifted away.

Tuesday, 9:10 A.M.- Thirty miles south of Raton, New Mexico

Cal came to on a green, military cot inside a green, military tent. He sat up, and found out that he was in just his boxers. In a nearby makeshift wardrobe, he saw a a brown shirt and loose-fitting camouflage pants. He put on both and went outside.

Outside, he was immediately met with a gun to the chest. The soldier, quite young, said, "Sir, I have direct orders to keep you inside your tent, sir!"

Cal waved his hands helplessly. "But I just..."

"Direct orders, sir!" the soldier yelled. "If you resist, force will be used and you will be moved to a higher-security facility, sir!"

"That's enough, private."

The voice came from a nearby tent. Out of the tent came a tall man in an officer's uniform. When he came near, the soldier snapped to attention.

"Stand down, private," the man said.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" The soldier backed away, and the man offered Cal his hand.

"Captain Edward Clark," the man said.

"Uh, Calvin Anderson," Cal said, shaking the hand.

"I apologize for the hostility of our first meeting," Clark said. "But we have a rather dangerous military threat here in New Mexico. We can't take any chances."

"You already know?" Cal said, feeling dumb for saying it.

The captain nodded solemnly. "We've known about it for quite a while, actually," he said. "When the problem first began at the Black Mesa Research Facility, we cracked down hard. Military squads were given the order to shoot anything that moves. Back then, our main goal was nondisclosure. We wanted this to die in Black Mesa."

As he spoke, Clark walked Cal through the camp. Cal got the impression of a camp set up as quickly as possible. Even so, it seemed more like a bunker than a camp.

"Unfortunately, it did not die," the captain said. "The forces sent there were inadequate and were forced to retreat. When we returned, the place was completely overrun. Our tactics changed quickly from offense to defense. We're now trying to prevent the invasion from spreading."

Cal sighed. "Well, two cities are already gone," he said. "Carrizozo and Albuquerque."

The captain laughed softly. "More than that," he said. "Socorro, Roswell, and pretty much all of southern New Mexico has been wiped away. We've been combing the highways for survivors like you. So far, our success is depressingly minimal."

The vortigaunt's words played in Cal's head: "To stop us is you cannot do." They chilled him, despite the broken English. He said, "What will you do once you're sure there are no other survivors?"

Clark sighed. "Nuke," he said. "Nuke the entire contaminated area. We want to take no chances about this, even if it means destroying a good portion of civilized land on U.S. Soil."

Cal looked at his feet. It was an ideal solution, seeing how anything else would undoubtedly fail, but he couldn't help but think of the house that had been his home for all his life. He thought how, right now, the jeep halfway through the front door was probably already settled, and how his bedroom might be a nest for...

"Now," Clark said, leading Cal into a large, hospital tent. "I suppose you'd like to meet the other survivors we found."

The first person was a middle-aged, bald man, who had a bandage wrapped around his head; Cal thought he could see stitches. Next to him was a black mother with two sleeping infants in her arms, all badly bruised. Next was a young man wearing a disheveled, dusty business suit.

"Most of these people were found inside a school bus," Clark was saying. "From what I'm told, a school bus for summer school was moving through the neighborhood of Carrizozo when the invasion started. People fled into the streets and, seeing this empty school bus, forced the bus driver to allow them on. They successfully made it out of the city, but when they were halfway across the desert, they were ambushed by several aliens, and the bus crashed. Most of them were killed, but none of them would be here if it wasn't for this man."

Clark motioned Cal to a uniformed police officer sitting on a footlocker.

"Lieutenant Lopez!" Cal cried.

Alfonso frowned at him. Suddenly, he remembered, and standing up with a smile, he shook Cal's hand and said, "Hey, kid. Looks like you made it out all right!"

"Lieutenant Lopez here encountered the fallen bus on his way out of Albuquerque," Clark explained. "He wasted no time in eliminating the creatures and rescuing the survivors."

Alfonso's face turned red, but he continued smiling. "Just doing my job," he said. "'Serve and protect.'"

Cal moved towards the back of the tent, where several people lay hooked up to machines. The first of them was a middle-aged woman with graying hair. His mother.

Cal fell to his knees and gently grasped his mother's hand, while his swollen eyes swelled with tears. "Mom, it's me," he whispered.

His mother turned her head and slowly opened her eyes. "Oh, Cal," she said weakly. "You made it all right."

"Yeah," Cal said with a chuckle. "I thought you had been through worse. When I woke up, you and dad were gone, and later, dad..."

His mother sighed, turning her head the other way. "I had a feeling," she whispered. She smiled again. "But you're all right, Cal. That's what matters."

Cal stood up and looked at Clark with a frown. "What happened to her?" he said.

Clark leaned in close. "She was on the bus, as you can imagine," he said. "She endured the worst punishment of everyone here. She was near the front, you see, and when the bus crashed... well, I'm surprised she survived it at all. As far as well can tell, she has a broken leg, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a minor brain hemorrhage. And that's just the big stuff."

Cal took in air sharply. "Will she... live?" he asked.

Clark shrugged. "We're doing our best to hold her," he said. "But she needs a real hospital, and fast. We're making arrangements to get her helicoptered to a hospital in Boulder, but until then, her chances are slim."

Cal looked at his mother's frail body, motionless and hooked up to several humming, beeping machines. His stomach churned. He glanced over at the bulky machines, then suddenly, he saw a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye. He looked at the bed next to his mother's, and there, with a cast on his left arm and a sling around his left foot, lay Barney Calhoun.

Cal stood over the bed. Barney opened his eyes and looked at him.

"You made it," Cal said.

Barney groaned. "Not as well as you did, it looks like," he muttered.

"How are you feeling?"

Barney laughed. "Pretty good," he said. "For a guy who just fell down a cliff and got cactus in his ass." He looked at Cal curiously. "How did you get out? Everything happened so fast..."

Cal said, "One of those creatures... a 'Nihilanth,' they called it... warped me to Albuquerque, where... and you won't believe this... one of those vortigaunts talked to me."

Barney sat up. "You're kidding," he said. "What did it say?"

Cal sighed. "It said for me to tell the human race to give up the fight."

Cal nearly jumped when Clark spoke inches from his ear. "That's ridiculous!" he said. "Sure, they've conquered southern New Mexico quickly and effectively, but that's only a fraction of the continental United States, and we have thousands of powerful nukes at our disposal! And then there's the rest of the planet... I'm telling you, there's no way we're giving up this early in the fight. You go ahead and tell them that, messenger boy."

Cal frowned. "Uh, actually," he said, "I have no way of..."

There was shouting outside the tent. Clark turned and quickly left the tent. Cal and Alfonso hurried after him. Outside, there was a group of soldiers gathered around a spot of bare dirt, to which an army jeep, followed by an army truck, was bound. The jeep came to a jolting stop, and an officer jumped out, saluting Clark when he touched down. Behind them, soldiers flooded out of the back of the truck.

"What'd you find, Sergeant Ford?" Clark said.

"No one alive, sir," said Ford. "All we found was this. In the middle of the road." He pulled out a dusty, black suitcase. On the side was a white symbol, partially obscured by clumps of dirt: λ. Clark cracked the suitcase open. Inside was a single document. It was written in shorthand, and read:

ANOMALOUS MATERIALS- SAMPLE OBTAINED, TESTED. EXPERIMENT PENDING ARRIVAL OF MATERIAL HANDLER FREEMAN. SAMPLE HALF-LIFE DETERMINED TO BE ONE DAY AND EIGHT HOURS.

"What the hell is this?" Clark said. "Sample? Experiment?"

Cal read over it. When he was done, he scanned the entire page, until his eyes rested on the header, which read: "Black Mesa Research Facility." He said, "Give it to Mr. Calhoun. I'll bet he knows something about it."

Clark went into the medical tent, woke up Barney, and handed him the document. When Barney was done, he closed his eyes. "Get your battlements ready," he said. "They'll be here by noon."