Alone in the Dark: Part one
"Alyx!!!" Gordon shouted at the door, keeping his eyes on the corridor ahead of him. "Please tell me you can open this door!" But no reply came from the other side. He checked his ammo. Shotgun: empty, SMG: empty, AR2 pulse-rifle: 30 shots left. Swearing under his breath, he cursed his bad luck; now was definitely not the time to run out of ammo.
He and Alyx were trying their best to get out of City 17, but their train had derailed, leaving them stranded in the middle of a zombie- and antlion-infested neighbourhood somewhere underground. They had been trying to find their way back to the surface, but each escape route they had come upon was riddled with antlions or zombines. It had severely depleted their supplies and they had yet to come upon a rebel hideout or a storage room with some ammo. They had to make each shot count. Luckily, both were expert marksmen.
Gordon heard a noise coming from the other side of the door; he strained his ears to hear some confirmation of his suspicions.
"Gordon! You still there?"
Alyx! He felt so relieved to hear her voice, and it was about time, too. She had been gone for what felt like hours, when in fact only five minutes had passed.
"I think I found something; hold on." Her voice had begun to grow distant, as if she was moving away from the door again. He didn't like this, and he hadn't liked it when she had run off without him. But at that time, it had seemed the logical course of action.
They had found a door out of there, but the problem was that it was locked. It appeared to be a fireproof door, so it's steel structure prevented it from being bashed in with a crowbar or a trashcan. Neither Gordon nor Alyx had any explosives left, so the option of blowing it up was non-existent. There weren't any air vents nearby, so no having Gordon crawling through them, either. But after some searching, aided by the HEV's flashlight, they found a small hole in one of the walls, leading to a chamber next to the corridor where the door left. It was way too small for Gordon to fit, but just big enough for Alyx to squeeze through.
So, here he was now, at the other side of the door, waiting for Alyx to come back and open it … somehow. It was kinda refreshing, the feeling that, for a change, it was not up to him to find a way out because he had the HEV suit, or crawl through small spaces because he had vent-crawling experience, but also kinda disturbing. He didn't want to think about it too much; their first priority was to get to the surface, meet up with Barney and get the hell out of here.
The corridor he was in led back to an underground garage that was partially caved in. They had met a lot of antlions in there, and had it not been for the gravity gun, they probably wouldn't have made it out alive. Somehow the antlions had managed to burrow their way through solid concrete, to the lowest level of the garage, and it had taken Gordon a combination of luck and ability to close the burrows with car wreckages. But already he could hear the antlions fighting against the cars, trying to move them out of their way so they could spawn into the garage again.
Gordon knew it was only a matter of time; time that they were running really short on now.
He suddenly heard a grinding noise coming from the garage: metal scraping against concrete. That could only mean one thing; the antlions had managed to clear a burrow and were on their way. Already he could hear their screeching and the flapping of wings, which meant that several were flying to higher ground, closer to the corridor where he was.
"Alyx!! I really need you to open this door now!!" he shouted, exasperated, at the closed door. But no answer came. "Alyx!! You there??" but still no answer came. Goddamned, why does this always have to happen to me? He gripped his AR2 pulse-rifle, the only one left with ammo, and slammed the bottom of it repeatedly against the door, hoping that on the other side, Alyx would hear the noise and hurry up.
The screeching came closer, and he could hear the antlions just outside the corridor. He estimated that within five seconds, the first one would appear in the corridor opening, and attack him at first sight.
4 seconds. He stopped slamming the pulse-rifle at the door. If Alyx were nearby, she would have heard him by now.
3 seconds. He wiped some sweat from his forehead.
2 seconds. He slammed the palm of his hand against the door, willing Alyx to open it.
1 second. He ran for it.
Gordon didn't wait for the antlions to come into the corridor. Instead, he ran in the opposite direction, away from the antlions, hoping that they wouldn't pursue. Shooting at them would only mean wasting what precious little ammo he had left, and he'd rather keep it for when he would absolutely need it. In this case, he still had the option to run for it, so that was what he was doing right now, as fast as his legs could take him.
Jumping over some fallen debris, he came into an open office and quickly shut the door. It wouldn't keep the antlions out for long, but it would at least give him some time to think about his next move. Not that he had a lot of options, though. Looking around the little office, he saw that there were no windows and no other doors, just a lot of television screens and some filing cabinets. This was just great; he had managed to find himself stuck in the security office with no apparent means of escape. From one predicament right into another, yeah … that was he, all right. He sighed and moved over to the old security station.
He heard the antlions just outside the door, screeching impatiently and slashing their front legs at the door, but it held. For now. Returning his attention to the security station, he saw a small red light flashing on one of the monitors. Apparently, the screens were still getting electricity from somewhere, which indicated that this station had still been used during the Combine occupation. Gordon bent down onto his knees and looked under the table at the wires running through the wall right up to the screens. He was surprised to see that it hadn't been the combine, but the rebels who had been using the station. If rebels had been here, then surely they must have left something behind.
Frantically, he started searching all the filing cabinets, hoping to find something, anything that he could put to use. But, even before he had started to search, he knew that it would be just too good to find something here. He stopped for a moment, resting his arms on an open drawer, suddenly realising that if Alyx managed to get that door open, she would get swamped with antlions. But then again, Alyx was no fool. Surely she would not open the door when hearing that the corridor had been overrun by antlions.
Reassured by that thought, he continued searching through the cabinets, only to find nothing, just as he had expected. This was turning out to be a bad-luck field day; it had to break sometime soon. Frustrated, he slammed the last open drawer shut, causing the cabinet to fall almost on top of him. If only he had his crowbar with him. But he had given it to Alyx so that she could maybe use it as a wedge to pry the door open, which had been surprisingly difficult, and in the end impossible.
He turned his attention back to the security station. There were some keyboards on the desk and just for the sake of it; he pushed one of the buttons. Above him, one of the screens jumped to life, showing the garage. Surprised, he looked at his finger. Hmm ... Returning his attention to the screen, he saw that there weren't any more antlions coming from the burrow, but that could change any minute.
He tapped the same key again, and the screen changed to show a part of this underground maze that he hadn't seen until now. Repeating the process several times, he only stopped when he saw a young woman, running for her life from antlions. It wasn't Alyx and when he looked closer, he noticed that she was wearing the uniform of a rebel, with the lambda signal on her sleeve. What is she doing down there? Curious, he tapped the key again, hoping to see where the girl was heading from a different angle, but he got the first screen with the garage. Going through the sequence a second time, Gordon didn't see her again. Weren't the rebels supposed to clear town?
Puzzled, he walked over to the door and suddenly noticed that he couldn't hear the antlions outside anymore. Grabbing the handle of the door, he carefully opened it to peek through, and couldn't see any antlion. Where the hell did they go? Quickly, he closed it and moved over to the screen. They weren't in the garage either, so something must've attracted their attention, something not in the garage and not in the corridor. Then it hit him: the girl! Could it have been those antlions that had been chasing her? Zapping through the sequence yet again, he couldn't see any antlion or rebel girl on any of the screens. Damn it.
With his crowbar in Alyx' possession, his pulse-rifle ammo nearly depleted, it left him with only one weapon: the gravity gun. Not that it was a weapon in the real definition of the word (well … with the exception of that one time in the citadel, off course), but rather a helping device, a giant sling in the hands of an experienced person, and he just happened to be such a person.
He opened the door and grabbed the gravity gun with both hands, ready to sling away any antlion coming his way. As he slowly walked through the corridor, back to the door where he had seen Alyx for the last time, he still neither heard nor saw any trace of the antlions that had previously chased him into the security office. Becoming more puzzled by the second, he turned the corner and saw the door … open. Alyx … Somehow, she had managed to open it. So that was probably where the antlions had gone to.
He stood in front of the door, gravity gun tightly gripped by both hands, his face set to a kind of determination that only few had seen and lived to tell about it. He had left Alyx alone, he wouldn't make the same mistake again. They had entered this together and they would leave together. With that thought in mind, he crossed the threshold.
To be continued …
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This was turning out to be a long chapter, so I decided to divide it into two pieces. Hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please review!
-update- I've corrected a few things that Cheezburgerlover pointed out to me in his review ... oops ... I guess that no matter how many times you reread it, some things still slip through.