As the militia's ranks thinned, so did our ammunition. Shots fired at the Combine were soon scarce, and then ceased all together. Slowly, the Combine soldiers came out of their hiding place and began to advance. Being mindful of the gunship keeping tabs on us, our militia prepared to strike when the Combine was fully exposed.
"Wait for them…" I heard someone say, almost in a whisper, a few ranks away. "Hold…"
Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the Combine troops burst into a full sprint on our position, blasting their SMGs liberally, some chucking grenades.
"Fire! Now, now, now!" my dad yelled, blasting his gun into the wall of soldiers approaching us. I snapped my trigger several times, barely bothering to aim. With all the enemies coming at us, I was bound to hit something. Many soldiers fell, but many more kept coming. There was no end to the wave that was about to crash upon a very flimsy dam that was our militia. The Combine were within close range in a matter of seconds, blasting away our own men with their rampant gunfire. The man next to me erupted in a flash of blood and fell to the ground, dead as a dead could get. I quickly dispatched the Combine that appeared, and avenged my comrade's death.
'What the hell are they doing?' I thought frantically. 'Why are they charging?' There was no time to think about it, because more Combine were jumping over into our long trench and blasting the living Hell out of everyone. One soldier jumped over and landed right in front of me. I raised my pistol at the exact same time he raised his SMG.
He pulled his trigger first.
However, dear luck saved me that day from being a rotting paperweight. Instead of a bang coming of his weapon, a series of clicks sprung forth.
Unfortunately, luck has a funny way of turning around and screwing you.
As I pulled my trigger, a click came from my gun as well. We were both out of ammo. The soldier reached for another magazine to fill his weapon, but I had a backup weapon, well, on my back. I forcefully swung my woodcutting axe off my back, using my shoulder as leverage, and smashed it blade-first into the Combine bastard's head. I saw no blood, but a muffled screech told me I did some damage, and the soldier collapsed is a heap on the blood-stained ground. I tried to get my axe out of the soldiers head, but it was stuck in his armored helmet-mask. Yet another soldier jumped over into the trench and faced me, and poor me, with no weapons, did the only thing I could think of: I put up my dukes and gestured for the soldier to bring it. I could almost see the sneer behind his mask, as he put down his gun and dew out a different device. It looked like some kind of nightstick, but then the soldier gave it a little flick of the wrist and the end lit up with a zapping kind of noise. He charged me, and I put up my arms in defense.
I was unprepared for the shock that was delivered next.
Quite literally, a shock. The soldier delivered a swift and decisive blow to my arms, and it felt like I had just grasped on to both ends of a running car battery.
The next hit caught me dead in the face.
I reeled back in pain. Everything was spinning, all color was distorted, and if felt like my face has been lying on a boiling frying pan for an hour or so. I closed my left eye to ease the pain , the put my first up again, once more telling the soldier to "Show me what he has". The Combine soldier charged again, but this time I was ready. I caught his glowy-stick in mid-swing and used all of my strength to force it back down onto his own mask, right to where the eyepiece is, and I held it there for as long as I could. I was also shocked by what happened next, but in a different context than before.
I would have held the shock-stick to the soldier's face a bit longer, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye the gunship hovering overhead. I could hear a slight whirring coming from the tip of the head, were the gun was located. Something bad was about to happen, I knew; something bad that I didn't want to get caught in.
I was right. The gun on the head of the gunship opened fire in the ditch, and I dived out of the way just in time. The soldier that I fried with his own shock stick, however, was torn to shreds by his own gunship.
"Jesus!" I whispered to myself. "These guys don't care if they kill their own boys! Those scumbags…" I leaned against the wall of the trench to catch my breath for a few seconds, and analyzed the situation: Blake was close to me, blowing a hole into every Combine that got remotely near him, random Militia were either killing Combine or getting killed by Combine, and my dad…
My father had lured a Combine soldier into a fistfight just as I had done, but my dad was definitely a better boxer than I.
"Come on, you little fucker," he taunted, raising his fists. The soldier charged him with the same kind of glowing stick that I was assaulted with, but my dad's fists were faster. Before the soldier knew what had hit him, he had been hit 3 times in the mask. On the fourth blow, the soldier's mask broke off completely, and he was KO'ed.
"Is that all? Come on, I'm a 55 year old man!" my dad laughed.
He spoke much, much too soon.
A Combine soldier appeared at the top of the trench behind him and fired several times, striking my father in the back, and the bullets going all the way through.
"No!" I yelled, running over to him.
My dad crumpled to the ground, his old bones finding rest at last. He was dead before he hit the ground.