Chapter 1
Unforeseen Results
A lonely pair of boots could be heard marching along. The echoes gave away the young man's true despair. He walked forward as the boots mocked him by mimicking his feelings of wanting to be surrounded by others. But in a sense of compliance, an average person would also receive the feeling that both his feet and mind were lonely. But sibling rivalries only die during emergencies.
The lonely street was once part of the bustling suburban town centers that plagued the land like the Black Death. The town centers now under attack by the immortal assimilation of materials no longer protected by progress. The young man groaned as he walked into a two story fort of brick, mortar, metal and blood. It was once a gun shop but now it only serves as cache of infinite limited possibilities. He grabbed two boxes of tactical buckshot for his shotgun; it was intended to hunt beasts of similar looks but different tastes. He then yanked some of the AR2 clips required to properly defend himself; He quickly stuffed them into his hoody's pouch like stuffing a turkey.
Outside, a group of people, or rather people that were once people, gathered and slumped their way towards the gun shop. They slumped their way up to the door and windows, where they began their music of hunger. Their groaning was easily identified with that of headcrab zombies. The young man continued to place crates full of ammunition and weapons into the fifties era Ford truck which was saturated with fuel. He walked over to the passenger side of the truck and placed five plastic cartons of fuel, slamming the door without a care in the world.
The glass shattered back at the front of the shop, the bullet proof glass finally showing its limits much like Humanity has, with the Combine which was the alien race currently in control of Earth. The metal bars were the heroic last standers. Far too rusted just like the rebels who just wanted a happy ending. Soon, the hunger of these vile abominations wasn't being fed and they grew restless, turning their attention to the back of the gun shop where the sputtering of an engine could be heard. They began to bang, trying to get in, with their torment lasting with their hunger. As the door began to lift, their moods changed from restless to frantic, wanting a piece of the tender human meat behind the door.
What those head crab zombies saw would have made a Combine soldier shit himself in full horror. Fuel jets shot out at them and hosed them with fumes of kerosene, it was going to be the Holocaust, but for victims that were truly, inhuman. William grabbed a wrench and threw it at the metal tubing that was spewing its shower of death becoming an inferno with a spark. The zombies began to yell, shouting human words, asking for god to help them. But they weren't going to get any help, because as William became the shepherd, the zombies became his flock. And a shepherd must always tend to his flock, especially when they became unruly.
As William began to finish packing up he looked up to see one of them made it past before it sparked. As it swung down its elongated boney arms, William responded by tripping its feet out from under it. The head crab wasn't originally part of the Human body, the balance to sprint and fight effectively as a human was severely retarded, literally. The hunched remains of a head crab zombie was similar to that of an adult with Down syndrome and the inability to show the tell tale signs of pain. They were the scariest retards a man could ever meet. William slammed his foot on the headcrab itself twice; the squeal of the head crab in pain could be heard. The zombie grabbed the head crab as if it were having a migraine. William grabbed his shotgun by its grip and flipped from his back to in-front of him, he placed it at his waist and tilted down toward the zombies host and fired, the buckshot ramming into the soft flesh of the headcrab, yellow blood splattering out as it died, killing the victim with it. Under the newly killed corpse, gold and crimson blood mixed together as it pooled under its owners' corpses. The mixture just showed how close the two dead things were. William quickly pumped the shotgun and went back to finishing up his task he had set out to complete by then. He didn't want to look at the twitching body's face, stripped clean of personality created by looks, the mouth still open from when the host was screaming for its last few seconds of life. The personalities no longer readable much like the soldiers who now defend the alien slave holders that controlled these vile demons.
The host or headcrab that he speaks off was not of Earthen decent, rather it was from another realm known as XEN. The headcrab was a parasite, large to a human's perspective and definition of a parasite. It had no identifiable eyes or ears. It had human shaded skin, the skin's texture eerily similar to human skin. This creature had two stumps for hind legs, merely serving the purpose of charging at a possible victim to mutate for its own revolting continuation of the species. The two front legs were similar in shape to spider legs but with the texture and muscle of a human's thigh and calf, if that human had fangs on the underside of his/her thigh right before the knee. Betwixt these legs of death would be a few fangs for cutting open the human chest and creating a cavity revealing the internal organs, it was a most gruesome autopsy done by nature not human. Since it hopped onto the head to take control, the headcrab is the only thing that can see and it uses heat detection. The last major indicator that it's a headcrab is the provocatively placed mouth, within was the beak which was the source of its evil and hunger. With the mouth having a similar shape and texture to a woman's vaginal lips because the headcrab was truly a freak of nature. They're arrival was just a side effect to the Resonance Cascade that shred a hole between Humanity's Universe and the border-world known as XEN. Through that hole, hundreds of creatures were thrown into Earthen existence by smaller rifts connected to the original one. The XENian wild life wreaked havoc on the earthen habitat. Many herbivores were annihilated by the omnivores and carnivore alien species. The average headcrab did not have any real defense because of its parasitic nature. Its defense was attaining a host and it was also the best way to stay fed and satisfied. Most animals' heads were too oddly shape; it was only a very horrific coincidence that human heads fit perfectly. This allowed headcrabs to gain control of the animal that was at the top of this new found food chain in Earth. The coined nickname 'headcrab' has an elusive origin since it seemed everyone called them the same thing in the same language which narrowed it down to anyone who wasn't taught English at an early age which was very few people at that point. To his knowledge, he was the youngest person to still be alive. That was because after humanity's surrender the Combine immediately installed a series of arrays that when turned on, prevented a certain series of protein chains from forming that were critical for the embryonic process of development. Every fetus on the planet at that point was aborted, became still born or were developmentally disabled which warranted being put down by the Combine. They brought back survival of the fittest and it hit Humanity hard. The human population dwindled astonishingly quickly
William opened the truck's door and climbed in, unafraid of whatever was left out there. He had seen it all before, and he was armed now. The truck slowly exited into the alley way, almost like life hadn't changed. He turned onto the empty street and smiled. His head saying, this is the best kind of traffic ever, as he drove as he laughed and headed west, deeper into the suburbs of Philadelphia.
A squeak yelped from the truck's suspension. The truck's body was the only original piece and even that was modified. The wood parts being replaced with scrap metal from Combine buildings and equipment. The windows were double layer thick bullet proof glass. The truck's hull completely covered on the inside by more Combine scrap metal. The truck's original metal was repainted in a woodland urban mix.
Driving away from that hell hole William noticed the sight of several long black rain-drop like canisters jetting through the air at freefall. A trail of smoke left behind them as they slammed face first skateboarder style into the ground, creating small impact creators. They were simply called shells, filled with more of those parasitic bastards were now being unleashed in a human free zone. It was odd though, you would think there would be head crab animals, but head crabs were pray to everything except those on the top of the food chain…at least the original food chain. The new modified food chain had a few unnatural additions.
The scenes on the side of the road were just a blur. Much like the constant turn of events around his life, he learned to ignore it. He tried his best to ignore it, but some things suck you in against your will; everyone got sucked in by the Seven Hour War, that both sucked you into their respective infinitely large black holes. He never understood why they happened, it just happened. He knew something weird was going to happen; he was warned far beyond the initial incident. That mutual friend that warned him the day of the incident…he was warned by someone close not to accept the offer. Sentient curiosity got the better of him and it cost him the man who warned him.