The grammar and spelling errors have been corrected in chapter one (thank you Akiqueen!), so I present to you chapter two, about double the length of chapter one. enjoy!
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The House on the Cliff
It almost felt normal, cruising around on a deserted road with not a cloud in the sky. You only had to ignore the occasional antlion coming at you or the Combine soldier doing his utmost to score the ultimate hit. Gordon Freeman sat in his buggy, en route for Nova Prospect on the dangerous route known as Highway 17. He had already been driving for several hours, blasting through Combine patrols and reducing antlions to mangled heaps of flesh.
He had passed Little Odessa and was on his way to Lighthouse Point. But the rebels had warned him that it was a long way, especially with the terrible state the highway was in after years of neglect and antlion burrowing.
After he had passed yet another tunnel, he saw a house standing on a cliff overlooking the beach. He stopped the buggy to take a closer look at it before driving into another trap. It looked deserted, but so had that last house until he had practically bumped into a Combine soldier while turning a corner. If he would have been able to see the soldiers face, his reaction would have been one of 'f*cking hell!', but these Overwatch soldiers didn't have any emotions anymore and they wore those hideous masks, so instead he had received a rather painful punch with the bottom of a pulse rifle which had sent him flying.
Gordon carefully rubbed his cheek where the rifle had hit him. That encounter had only been two hours ago and already it didn't hurt anymore. If he had a mirror close by, he would have been able to see that the bruising had already subsided from a dark blue to a faint green. Something that in normal circumstances (with no HEV suit) would take at least a few days to heal.
He got out of the buggy and walked over to the other side of the road, careful not to step too close to the edge; it was a long way down. Crouching down into the wet grass, he took his crossbow and pointed it at the house, activating the zoom the weapon had. He couldn't see any Combine or rebels for that matter. It was just another abandoned house on Highway 17, like those he had passed already too much. He lowered the gun, but didn't get up. The sun was setting, and even in this desolate landscape, it looked beautiful. The orange was unlike anything he had ever seen before, probably due to whatever the Combine were pumping into Earth's atmosphere. He savoured the moment for just a little while longer, while he still could.
After the sun had begun to sink into the ocean, he pointed the crossbow at the house again. Maybe he had missed something, so it didn't hurt to double check, just to be on the safe side rather than on the sorry one.
As he went over the windows of the house and on to the little shed next to it, he saw the tip of something black behind the shed. Immediately zooming in, he couldn't suppress a curse. It was a headcrab canister. So there had been rebels there; and they had undoubtedly either been replaced by zombies or made it out alive. Gordon hoped for the latter. He quickly scanned for any other canisters, but couldn't find any. If there were more, then they weren't visible from where he was.
He got to his feet and slung the crossbow over his shoulder. As he walked back to his buggy, he noticed that it was becoming dark rather quickly. His buggy didn't have any headlights, and remembering the many deep gaps in the highway (or even the entire sections of road missing), he suddenly realised that it might be a very good idea to stop for the night. It wouldn't help Eli or the resistance if he crashed his buggy because he wasn't able to see where he was driving.
He eased himself into the driver's seat and put his hands on the steering wheel. There wasn't a lot of time left before it became too dark to see a hand in front of your face. One headcrab canister meant that there would be four headcrabs in the vicinity of the house. Depending on how many rebels had not been able to escape, he would not only have to deal with headcrabs (the least of his worries right now), but also with a maximum of four zombies. Gordon nodded to himself; he had dealt with worse.
Although … everything could change if one or all four of the headcrabs were poison ones. He winced as he remembered Ravenholme. How he absolutely hated those little black critters. Normal ones he could deal with, but every time he heard that distinctive noise, chills ran through him and it took all of his mental power not to panic. He had been bitten by one inRavenholme, and it had almost killed him if it hadn't been for Father Grigori.
He looked at the sun disappearing behind the horizon and knew he'd better make it quick.
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Twenty years of neglect had taken its toll on the house. A lot of the windows were boarded up, and as far as he could see, there wasn't a single glass window that was still intact anymore. The wind was playing with the boards and the paint was mostly gone, leaving the wood unprotected against the elements.
His priority was sweeping the house and killing everything inside that posed a threat to him, as he had to spend the night there. He'd rather not have a headcrab sneak up on him and try to couple with his head. Gordon grabbed his shotgun and filled it up with shells. Eight should do the job.
He made his way to the front door as quietly as possible, trying to discern any noises coming from the house. But the only thing he could hear was the whistling of the wind through the many broken windows. He grabbed the shotgun with both hands and pumped two shells in the loading chamber. One hand went to the doorknob while he made sure that the shotgun was still pointing wherever his eyes would go. He slowly opened the door but its hinges made more noise than he cared for.
The hallway was empty, so he quickly scanned the adjacent rooms for any headcrabs, but all he found was broken furniture and spent shotgun shells on the floor: memories of a past battle.
There was a couch in middle of the big living room and, as he approached it, he saw a pair of feet coming out from behind it. His fingers tightened around the barrel of the shotgun and he went behind it to see whom the feet belonged to. It was a Cmbine soldier. Crouching down, he looked at the body to see what he had died of, and sure thing, many small pellets punctured the bulletproof vest, the proof that a blast from a shotgun had hit him. But had this occurred before or after the house had been shelled? There was no way he could tell, and at this moment it was not one of his major concerns.
The ground floor proved to be clean and Gordon made his way to the first floor, carefully putting down his feet on the flight of stairs, trying hard to make the least bit of sound possible. But these boards were old, and with every step he took they protested beneath his foot. As he reached the first floor, he heard a faint noise; one he recognised all too well: a headcrab. The noise was coming from the left-hand room. But before he entered it, he quickly scanned the big, open bedroom: no zombie and no headcrabs, but it was eerily quiet in there. Even the wind had stopped whistling through the windows. It was as though everything was holding its breath for what was to come. He didn't like the feeling it gave him.
He entered the room and saw the little bugger in the far right corner, next to the console. For now, it hadn't noticed him and Gordon was going to make sure that it never did. He pulled the trigger and yellow blood spurted out of the headcrab. The impact sent it flying to the other corner, but the wail coming from the dying headcrab wasn't the only noise he heard. He quickly turned around and saw a zombie, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, its claws outstretched, begging for fresh meat. He raised his shotgun again to fire off a shot, but the zombie was faster than him and threw one of the chairs at Gordon. It shattered as it hit Gordon's shotgun that he had held defensively in front of him. He staggered backwards, but recovered quickly. Pointing the gun at the zombie, he pulled the trigger. The impact slowed it down a bit, but it hadn't been killed by the shot. Gordon pumped another two shells into the loading chamber, the sound of the ones falling on the ground ignored by both. He pulled the trigger another two times, and the second shot ripped the headcrab right of the head of the zombie, killing it in the process.
One headcrab and one zombie dead, which meant that only two were left. Two zombies or two headcrabs, or another combination of these two.
Gordon recharged the four spent shells in his shotgun and moved into the bedroom. He found a rebel laying on the bed, his chest ripped open by the claws of a zombie and his face forever contorted by fear and anguish. Before he walked over to the bed, he kneeled down and looked underneath it. There were no headcrabs or any other surprises, but a pack of shotgun shells. He moved over to the bed and reached out with his hand to grab the shells, when he suddenly froze mid-action, hand still outstretched. The noise he had just heard made the hairs on his neck stand up. You have got to be kidding me… He forgot about the shells and retreated into the nearest corner, eyes darting to every inch of the room. Where is the f*ck is it? His breathing became shallow and fast as a wave of panic hit over him. Poison headcrabs! And by the sound of it, it wasn't alone; it was accompanied by a low moan, which could only mean that one of those superzombies was in the house. Flashes of Ravenholme and the crazy laughter of Father Grigori resounded in his ears. Maybe Barney is right, and I have the worst luck in the world.
But these superzombies were made up of four poison headcrabs, so where had the other two come from? He must have missed one canister; there must've been another one. Oh god, how could he have been so careless? Before he had entered the house, he should have made a sweep of the surroundings first. But it was too late for that now.
By now, he had seen that the headcrab wasn't on this floor. If it had been, then he wouldn't have been sitting like a lamb in the corner of the room.
Checking his pouch for any grenades, he found only one. Great… It would have to be enough, but he was realistic enough to know that it took more to kill one of these superzombies. He got to his feet and held the grenade in one hand, the shotgun in the other.
These zombies were not too clever, so he hoped it was just randomly walking around the room, awakened to a thirst for blood by his gunshots and the moaning of his fellow zombie.
The flight of stairs to the second floor was in even worse condition than the one to the first floor. He was just able to regain his balance after one step splintered right under his foot. He looked up at the upper floor and saw a hint of the zombie as it passed the open door to the upper bedroom, the headcrabs on his back chirping along with its moan. It hadn't seen him yet, but it sounded very agitated. Somehow, it knew he was coming…
He pulled the pin out of the grenade with his teeth, waited three seconds and threw it through the door into the room. The blast shook the entire house and the explosion was followed by a wail from the zombie. He heard the wood of the floor splintering as it gave way under the zombie, causing it to fall on the bed of the first floor. The impact was too much for the old wooden floor and it too gave way to the combined weight of the zombie and the bed, crashing down into the ground floor. Gordon stood perplexed on the stairs; this result he had not expected. This I have to tell Barney…
He quickly retraced his steps to the first floor bedroom and looked down through the gaping hole to the living room. The zombie lay motionless between the debris of wooden floor panels. The poison headcrabs had survived the fall and were running around in the living room. As soon as they noticed Gordon on the first floor, they screeched and tried to jump up at him, but they couldn't bridge the distance. It took Gordon only three shots from his shotgun to kill them.
He frowned; there seemed to be missing one; there should have been four. Retracing his steps to the second floor staircase, he heard the quick tapping of a headcrab's four limbs on the wooden floor. He climbed all the way up and stood with his back next to the door opening, the sound of the headcrab coming from the room beyond. These things were so damned fast; he would have to be quick.
With one smooth move, he turned into the door opening and pointed his shotgun at the headcrab just as it saw him as well. It screeched almost in victory as it leapt toward Gordon who managed to fire off one shot, hitting the headcrab, but not killing it. An angry screech came from the little black bug as it made ready for a second jump. Gordon pumped another two shells and squeezed the trigger of his shotgun, but it jammed. Oh crap... He had no time to remove the two shells as the poison headcrab jumped for Gordon's head, ready to bite him with its poisonous fangs. He ducked just in time, covering his exposed head with his arms as the headcrab overshot him and banged against the wall behind him, stunning it for only a few seconds. But they were just the seconds Gordon needed.
He let the useless shotgun fall from his hands and grabbed the SMG instead. It didn't have a lot of ammunition left, but it better be enough to finish this little f*cker off. He squeezed the trigger and felt the rebound of the gun as it spewed its bullets at the headcrab. Gordon only stopped when he heard the distinctive click-click of an empty mag.
With a sigh of relief, he lowered his gun and let it fall on the floor next to the shotgun. He stood there for a couple of seconds in complete silence, holding his breath, listening for any other headcrab or zombie noises, but he didn't hear any. With the noise he had made, every headcrab that would have come out of those two canisters would have already found their way to him. The house was clear, so there was only thing he needed to do: hide the buggy from sight. The shed would do nicely.
As he moved over to the staircase, he looked outside to see that it had become almost dark, the only light being that of a full moon which illuminated the entire house through the broken windows.
After he had hidden the buggy in the shed, he activated his flashlight and walked back inside the living room of the house, looking down at the dead zombie who wore the remains of a blue jumpsuit. The rebel who had been on the bed of the first floor lay over the couch, eyes still wide open. Gordon walked over to the body and closed the eyes of the rebel. It was all he could do for the poor soul.
He decided that the ground floor probably wasn't the best place of the house to be in, so he went up to the first floor, into the room where the bed had been only twenty minutes ago. He chose the corner furthest away from the door and sat down with his back to the wall.
The shotgun was cleared and recharged quickly; then he laid it on the ground next to him, within easy reach, along with his faithful crowbar. He was going to try to catch some sleep, but if there was one thing he had learned in Black Mesa and his first days in City 17, it was that there was no way that Gordon Freeman was going to sleep with a peace of mind. His dreams were haunted with the ghosts of the past and the faintest noise would make him grab his crowbar and slash out defensively. But he would have to nonetheless, so he closed his eyes and waited for the demons to appear.
The night was restless and short, and by the time the day broke, Gordon was already wide awake. He got up and looked outside. The first signs of the sun rising were visible in the night sky. He didn't have a lot of time to spare and he had to get back on the road. The longer he waited to get to Nova Prospect, the more time the Combine had to do something horrendous to Eli.
Gordon shuddered at the thought. He had only just been reunited with people he cared for. He never thought he would see them again after his one-way trip to Xen. Time... There never was enough time.
"Do you need some more … time, Doctor Freeman?" What the hell? Gordon spun around with his shotgun in his hands, ready to pull the trigger if he saw a man in a blue suit, but he could see no one; the room was empty. He quickly moved to the window of the little room where he had killed the first headcrab and looked outside, expecting to see the Gman disappearing from view, as always, but there was no one. (Gman had been, off course, something Barney had come up with whenever he got Gordon to talk about 'him')
With a sigh, he lowered his shotgun. My mind must be playing tricks on me. Even with a few hours of rest (if you could call it rest), he still felt exhausted. As if the few hours had only made him even more tired. How he craved for a good night's rest. He hadn't had any since… well… since he had gotten up for that infamous experiment back in Black Mesa.
He rubbed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. He had to get away from this place.
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So, that was it. Hope you like it as much as I did writing it :-)