I've been told that the lights you see when you're near death are just nerve endings flaring in the back of your head, but nerve endings could never emulate the things I saw. I swear that I saw angels in a bright light, and heavenly voices calling to me. Had peace reached me? Was I dead?

The voices instantly left me, and were replaced by yells and screams, and the heavenly light and the angels were replaced by black smoke and soldiers. No, I was still alive, and still in the same Hell that I had not gotten used to seeing.

I lied there on the ground for a while, not wanting to move. I touched my face because it felt hot and wet, and realized that my forehead had a huge cut on it, and that it was bleeding profusely. The first, but not the last, injury I would sustain in this war.

'Damn those bastards!' I thought, remembering what had happened. I rolled up off the ground and crouched, looking to where Point 1 wall was, or better yet, used to be. The rockets had completely blown away that side of the fort, leaving a gaping hole for the Combine to come rushing through.

"Mike!" someone yelled at me. "Mike! Holy Jesus man, are you alright?" Blake came running over and dropped on his knees next to me, helping me up. "I'm fine, I'm fine," I protested, hardly true. "Just a scratch…" Blake looked around. "Where's your weapon?" he asked. I looked around for my .22 rifle, but finding nothing but rubble. "Must've got blown away in the explosion," I said. "Don't worry, I've got spares," I told him, taking out one of my pistols and flicking off the safety. "Be prepared to use it," he told me. "The soldiers are going to be coming through that hole any second. We need to find some cover here!"
Just as he said it, Combine soldiers came running through the former wall, their SMGs blazing. "Run!" Blake yelled, yanking me up. We sprinted like lightning and dived behind a chunk of concrete, with bullets bouncing every which way. Somewhere out there, I heard my dad's booming voice yell, "Let loose!" Refugees that I had not seen before popped out from behind rocks and ditches of their own and returned fire, determined to keep the Combine from getting through that hole. Several Combine fell, and the rest dived for cover. "Yeah!" I yelled, feeling the adrenaline rush through me. I raised my own gun, adding my bullets to the counter-attack. For a couple seconds I thought we had a chance at winning; but just for a couple seconds. Reality came down from the sky, along with that gunship. It opened fire on our ranks, and those who didn't have a considerably good cover were torn to pieces. I ducked back under the concrete rock and reloaded my pistol. "Damn it!" I cursed. "That gunship is screwing us over out here! We need to take that thing down!" Blake ducked next to me and yelled in my ear over the gunshots, "We can't! Bullets don't hurt it!"

"Do we have any explosives?" I asked, hoping we had something to take it down with.

Blake answered with what I hoped he wouldn't.

"No, we don't!"

I bit my lip. This is going to be very, very, ugly. I looked back over to the Combine soldiers and I saw something that made me want to pray again. The APCs were with them now. "Their tanks are with them!" I yelled. I ducked down next to Blake and spoke quickly, "Blake, we have to get out of here!" Blake shot his gun several times and then crouched down to speak to me. "Why?" he asked, reloading. "I don't want to get blown up, that's why!" I yelled at him.

"If we fall back, those soldiers are going to mow us down, not to mention that damn gunship!" he yelled back. He went up shoot again. Something he saw up there made him duck, covering his ears.

"DOWN!" he screamed. A second later, I painfully understood. A rocket from the APCs crashed right into the ditch next to us, blowing it and everyone inside it to smithereens. The noise of the rocket and the screams of the nearby refugees forced me to clap my hands over my head in agony. If this is what war was truly like, I wanted no part in it.

"Okay, let's fall back!" Blake quickly agreed, disregarding what he had said before. I nodded to him, and we jumped out from behind our cover and ran for the second defensive line, which was about 150 feet behind the first one. Now that we were out of our cover, I was able to quickly see the whole picture: the bodies of my friends and fellow refugees were strewn all over the ground, and the Combine were still pushing forward, overwhelming the front lines. Many others in the ditches next to us were following suite, and running for better safety. Many of them were not as successful as we were, getting shot in the back on the way, tripping over and getting blasted, or just getting killed by the gunship that was still hovering overhead. Blake and I dived over the shabby defensive wall that was built to fire behind and fell right into a very wide trench, big enough for five men to sleep comfortably in, lengthwise. Only a couple more refugees hopped over the wall behind us. I looked around and shook my head with distain. "So few…." I whispered. They had already dwindled our numbers down so much, and we were running out of ammunition. In my heart and mind, I knew that we would never last. Our camp would be overrun in matter of minutes.