Chapter Two:
A Job to Do
William Fletcher
"So you think this is happening all over Sector C?"
Jack nodded as we walked down the floor of the transit tunnel. "That's my guess. I've been running into those little suckers and other weird, shackled humanoid things with green lightning all the way here from my office, and that's halfway across Sector C from here. My plan is to get to the main comms uplink in this sector and figure out if we can start up the emergency power. We do that, we can contact people in the other sectors and maybe figure out what the hell is going on."
"Weird humanoids with green lightning, huh? That sounds like the thing that took out the tram we were in." I sighed, looking behind me to make sure JD was still following, which he was. "I still don't get it. What could've caused this to happen? I mean, this is literally an alien invasion, man, and one that we're both taking surprisingly well," I pointed out, beaming my flashlight down the tunnel behind us. I could still just barely make out the smoldering ruins of the tram JD and I had been riding in.
"No idea, but I'm willing to bet it's probably something to do with that test they had today, in the barrel. And it probably just hasn't sunk in just yet how serious this is. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if either of us woke up in a cold sweat in our beds back in the dorms right about now," Jack replied. "Regardless, long distance radios, phones, sat-comm, we're cut off from all of it here until we can get power restored back to the Sector C comms uplink, so that's our first priority."
I sighed and rolled my eyes to myself, thinking for once how nice it would be to wake up in a cold sweat, compared to our current situation where, if we even survived, we'd certainly make the front page of The Mesa Times. The science team members in Sector C were good people to hang around when I wasn't on duty. They were a bit of a weird bunch, and funny too, in their own sciencey way, but they'd also stepped up to help take care of JD while I was working. Some of them, like the ex-university physics teacher Dr. Knewon, had even gone so far as to even try to teach him things like math and science. But at the same time, they also had a tendency to be a bit too bold for my tastes, and it seemed like they might have finally bitten off more than they could chew.
"All right then. Let's flip the switch and figure what on God's green Earth is going on here. You know how to get us there?"
Jack nodded again. "Yeah. We just need to get down this tunnel to a security station. Unless the whole place has been changed up since the power went down, it'll be accessible from an emergency tram car in all the stations, like the ones you saw on your tour in Sector E," he answered.
I tilted my head to the side as I allowed JD to pass me so that he was protected on both sides of the bottom of the winding tunnel. "I didn't know there was a way there from the security checkpoints," I admitted, before a loud shriek echoed down the tunnel from behind us. Jack whipped around and pointed his shotgun out beside mine, but nothing approached us. With a sigh, Jack shook his head.
"No reason why you should," he answered with a shrug, walking back behind me to keep going. "You need high security retinal clearance to get in. Well, unless the facility is put into full evacuation protocol. Then all doors get opened automatically to let anyone through. But if I remember correctly, that was one of the first fuses to blow this morning before everything went down."
My eyes darted from wall to wall in tandem with my bouncing flashlight. "Well, ain't that just some great news…" I mumble under my breath, before lightly knocking my head to the side with the palm of my hand, a near-silent reminder that I'd been trying not to be as pessimistic about life as I had been since Carol's death. Nobody ever blamed me for it. Anyone would be well within their rights to be angry at the world after losing someone as close to them as Carol was to me. But at the same time, I knew very well that it was high time to quit the habit, especially since the other day the doctors at Black Mesa had given me news that JD was getting more responsive, which could only mean one very, very good thing.
A few minutes of walking passed in total silence between me, Jack, and JD, until I finally heard my friend call out "Ah, we're here, but it looks like the ladder is out. Give me a boost, and I'll pull you and JD up." I turned around and saw what he meant. Above us was the metal grate of the station platform, but the ladder had been torn in two in the middle. With a nod, I kneeled down and pushed Jack up high enough for him to grab the remaining rungs, which he pulled himself up onto and then reached down to pull JD and I up one at a time.
On the station platform, I could see little but darkness in all directions, illuminated sporadically by the spinning red emergency lights of the transit system. "So, now what?" I asked Jack, who opened his mouth only to be cut off by a loud wailing from behind the metal door.
Jack responded with a single pump of his shotgun.
"Let's go tear some shit up."
I nodded in agreement, pulling back the slide on my pistol to make sure the bullet was chambered. "JD, stay behind me at all times in there, got it?" I asked my son. To my surprise and comfort, he managed a nod, and I smiled, ruffling up his hair gently before looking over at Jack. "All right, I'm ready when you are, boss."
With that, Jack kicked in the door and we rushed in, scanning the room with our flashlights pointed down the barrels of our guns. "I don't see anything… what do you wanna bet that was just an echo?" I asked, not wanting to know what alternatives could exist now. As if it were some kind of sick response, the same wailing echoed around the room again, and then a third time, much louder. "What the hell..." I muttered, looking to the doors in front of us. I took a step back with JD in surprise as they moved.
JD cowered behind me, and I could feel his little hands trembling against my legs as I pointed my gun towards the doors, with Jack doing the same on the opposite side of the room. Spotting a flare on a desk out of the corner of my eye, I leaned over and grabbed it, striking it against the wall to ignite it before underhand tossing it towards the rattling door.
In seconds, the doors were thrown from their hinges and a figure was illuminated in the light of the flare. It wore the lab coat of a scientist, but where it's head should've been was one of those creatures I'd killed on the tram. And worst of all, it wasn't alone. "What the hell is that thing?!" I exclaimed in confused shock, and one of the creatures turned and approached me and JD with a zombie-like gait. With a groan, it shambled in my direction, and I quickly put a trio of bullets through the alien creature at the humanoid's head. It fell face first to the ground with a thud, and I looked down my sights at another one of the gorey creatures.
Without waiting for Jack's response, I did the same to another one of the zombie-esc creatures, which were starting to flood the room. As they fell, one of them landed on top of the flare I'd thrown down, and its entire body was ignited in flames almost instantaneously. Bright flames illuminated the room and revealed a large horde of the zombies, but it also revealed something else. They actively shied away from the flames as they tried to get to us through the hail of our bullets.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. "Jack! Throw the flares at them! I don't know why, but these things are combustible!" I shouted, putting another bullet through the head of the crab monster and tossing another flare. I looked over my shoulder to see Jack doing the same thing I had moments before, striking a pair of flares against the wall behind him and throwing them at the zombies, who cowered away from the heat and the light.
As we watched, the zombies were unable to avoid the rapidly spreading flames, and they licked all across the shining, membrane-like skins of their now undead hosts. Their skeletal, bloody hands flailed around in a desperate attempt to escape the tongues of fire, and they collapsed one by one to the ground with dull groans and wails, forming large pyres of fire and smoke inside the room.
"Okay, what the hell were those things?" I asked Jack, as if he would have any more idea than me.
He laughed like he always did when something unexpected happened, an attempt to calm his nerves. This time, it was in vain as both of our hearts were still beating out of our chests in terror. "If I had to guess, those were former science team and security guard members. Take a look at the one that you shot before lighting the others on fire." I kneeled down to look at the corpse at my feet. Sure enough, it bore the same bulletproof vest that Jack and I wore.
I kicked it over onto it's back, and quickly saw a striking, and horrifying difference though. Unlike our jackets, this one had been torn completely in half down the middle, making room for a set of ribs, now more like a demonic pair of vertical jaws than anything else, with the organs completely exposed to the air. It's jaw, stripped of everything but bone, hung limply from it's head, as if it was about to fall off. And like the others who had gone up in flames, this one sported little to no flesh on it's hands, which were now more like claws than anything else. I quickly gagged and kicked it over again to rid us of the sight before I, JD, or Jack puked on the spot.
"Well… I'm not getting that out of my head any time soon. So where's this tram you were talking about?"
Jack beamed his flashlight at the walls around us. "Well, the emergency lights haven't kicked in, so something has to have busted the bulbs. Fortunately, I think I know about where it is… However…"
I looked at Jack, concern streaked across my face suddenly replaced with tension as we all heard more groans and wails from behind the wall of flames partially illuminating the room. "However what? Don't tell me it's in there with those… those things." Jack slowly nodded, and I paled. Beside me, so did JD. "So we go without comms then, until we find another way in. You saw the claws on those things, and their mouths... Even with a gun, a large group could easily overwhelm anyone!"
But Jack shook his head. "Not an option. If these things are appearing all over the facility, we need to know so we can contain them. If not, then we need to make sure the rest of the facility knows to shut their doors so they don't get infested like we've been. Comms are down, so we can't do either," he replied, and I stepped forward, only to be stopped by Jack's hand. "And no, you're not coming. I've got a more important task for you," he said, slipping back into his serious, no nonsense tone of voice that he used when he had to make a tough call. As one of the higher ups of security, it happened a lot more than I had thought when I first become a member of the security team.
I sighed, looking out the door. "Okay then, what is it?"
"It's pretty clear by now that this is a large scale emergency, at the very least for Sector C. For all we know, it could be for the entire damn facility. Therefore, while I'm in there getting the power restored to comms, I need you to find any other personnel you can and escort them outside the facility to safety." I nodded in understanding, remembering that as part of my emergency protocol priorities, something every member of the Black Mesa security team was required to memorize upon employment. "According to protocol, there should be military forces coming in to help with that objective, but since comms are down I don't want to bank on waiting for them. And even though he's not officially part of the science team, I'm giving JD top priority too, just like them. You get him to safety, officer. No exceptions."
I sighed, looking at my boss and nodding in affirmation.
"Understood, sir. What about you?"
"Like I said, I'm gonna get those comms running again or die trying. With any luck, I'll be able to find a way out after that, and maybe bring some others along with me. But this is where we part ways, Fletcher."
I nodded as we gripped each other's wrists tightly and shook them. "All right then. Best of luck. If we both make it out of this, I'll ask Calhoun to give that beer he owes me over to you. After what we just saw, if you're going back in there, you're gonna need it a hell of a lot more than I will," I said with a grin, and Jack flashed a smile back. "Goes without saying, but watch yourself in there. Call it a gut feeling if you want, but somehow I don't think this is getting any easier from here."
After shaking my hand, Jack scanned the room with his flashlight. The beam came to a stop on a broken off piece of metal siding from the wall, and he shrugged. "Well, guess that'll work," he muttered, fixing his shotgun to the clips on his thigh holster and picking it up. "Better get moving. Something tells me you're right, and this ain't getting any easier from here. You'd best be on your way before shit really hits the fan."
I nodded, and I turned around towards the door with JD at my side and walked out as Jack placed the metal sheet over one of the burning zombie corpses and walked over it safely, before kicking it away. I heard the sound of multiple shotgun blasts, before closing the doors on my friend.
The tunnel of the transit system was again eerily silent, save for mine and JD's footsteps. It was equal parts remarkable and shocking just how big of a change it had undergone since the beginning of the day. Even in the middle of the track tunnels, where there was the fewest number of stops, people could still be seen hurrying about to their days, when they couldn't afford to wait for the trams, which, although convenient and comfortable, weren't what you wanted to be on if you were running late.
"I guess the best place to look would be the Sector C dormitories," I thought to myself as I worked out where to go look first. "It's pretty easy to lock someone or something out of there, so if anyone's looking to try and wait this out in Sector C, that'd be the most logical place." I turned around, kneeled, and looked JD in the eyes. "Well bud, looks like we're headed home one more time. Not sure what our plan is after that, but just remember, I'm going to keep you safe, got that? I won't let anything hurt you."
He had Carol's eyes. It always struck me as rather cliché, what with how often you would see a heroic son in a movie who'd lost his parents have his father's looks, but his mother's eyes. Still, it brought me no small amount of comfort, like a silent reminder that Carol was still watching over us both. I certainly would never want him to ever be in the kind of danger those hero kids that were in the new movies and stories, like those wizarding books with the Potter boy and his friends, or that trilogy with the space wizards calling themselves Jedi, the evil, galaxy spanning empires, and a small, hopeful rebellion determined to overthrow them.
All the same, he certainly looked enough like me even at his young age, and with his mother's eyes, it was almost like some kind of otherworldly sign that he'd go on to do great things, and maybe, just maybe, we might save the world together. And it wasn't like anyone ever said Earth was the world that always had to be saved.
I sighed, resting my hand on his shoulder, my other hand beaming the flashlight up between us, illuminating our faces from below like we were telling a spooky ghost story to some friends. "I hope you know, you mean more to me than anyone could ever know. Anyone that is, except for us. You are my entire world, kiddo, no, my entire universe. I'd do anything to protect you, and you've made me so proud, watching you get stronger and stronger each and every day."
I sat there with him for a while longer. We didn't have the time for it, but for just a few minutes, I decided the rest of my job could wait a little bit for my son.
A/N: Once again, a bit of a shorter chapter, but now Will and JD have run into the Headcrabs, a brief encounter with a Vortigaunt, and now the headcrab zombies! And what happened to Jack? Sorry, but I'm not spilling. Just know that... well, I'm really not at liberty to say. (That's a lie, I totally can say what happens to him, but I'm just not gonna, heehee) Also, we've got some more family bonding between those two, because it's gonna be very important going forward! Next time, things are gonna start REALLY heating up as we change perspectives over to another new character, so buckle up and get ready. (And just for those of you who are curious little lore buffs like me, Will was out cold for the first few chapters of Half Life 1, but by the time he wakes up, he'd missed the first emergency broadcast by about an hour. In other words, Gordon is nearing the end of the office complex chapter with his buddies right about now.)
Also, I know nobody has asked about it, but if any of you want to, as long as you credit me (and let me voice act for it), I'd LOVE to see someone turn this into an SFM series. I would do it myself, but I simply don't have the time lmao, but if one of you wants to take a crack at it, let me know! I'd be happy to give you my two cents about how I imagined these scenes playing out as I write them down!