Tell me what you think.

[adulus]

It happened so fast. One second the squad was walking down the street, chatting even. Just another routine stroll through the junkyard to make sure no headcrabs or bullsquids had taken up residence. Then it happened. John heard a pop! Pop! Pop! and Samuel fell, groaning and clutching his leg. Barney screamed “Get down! Ambush” David, Josh, William, all died in a burst of gunfire. John didn’t know what to do. No real thoughts went through his head. His best friends mowed down just like that. Barney was yelling at him, but it sounded like gibberish. Bullets whizzed by. Finally barney pulled him down to the ground, and suddenly, the fear and adrenaline hit John. He could understand what barney was saying, “…with you son? You trying to die? Grab the SAW! We could use it.” His hand was trembling so bad. Why wouldn’t it stop? Then he realized. He’d been given an order. Automatically he grabbed the big gun. It was sinking in. They were dead, and he was being shot at. They were dead, gone. Morbidly, he thought it would be a closed casket funeral. If there was ever a funeral. Such things just didn’t happen these days. He realized he was slipping off. “…got to move son…” was all he heard. And he was afraid. He didn’t want to die. He was only 16. The sound of it echoed through his head again, “…got to move, son” He wanted to run. He wanted to be far away from everything, from pain and fear, death and destruction. So he got up, and ran. Just ran, crying like a baby. He had no idea where he was going. He had no idea what to do. Just ran. Tripping over junk, and pieces of filth. Finally, he stopped. He realized he’d been a coward. It wasn’t a conscience decision. It had just seemed like the only thing to do.

No, he wouldn’t be a coward. He had to go back, and help. He wiped off his face, turned around and ran back. There was no more gunfire. The combine troopers had been efficient. Barney Calhoun was gone. There was no body with that familiar black jumpsuit anywhere. Samuel was still lying on the ground, twisting and screaming in pain. God, how could someone bleed that much? He wanted desperately to run out there, comfort him, get a medic or something! Then he heard something in the back of his mind. He strained to hear it. Finally, it became clear. Barney Calhoun was talking, saying “In combat, you can’t lose your head, kid. Just know when to think, and know when to just pull the trigger.” It was an old memory, from right after he joined the resistance, 1 year ago. He couldn’t run out there. He'd be slaughtered. David and Josh had stopped moving. William was convulsing though, twitching madly. It ended when the combine trooper walked right up to within a meter of him, and put a burst into his head.
‘Bastard!’ John thought. ‘I’ll kill him. Ill rip him limb from limb. I’ll…no, I’ve got to think. What should I do?’

John then realized he was toying with the grenade around his belt, fidgeting with it in a way that made Alyx say, ”Damn it, kid, stop that. You’re going to blow yourself to pieces. Sheesh!” Then he got an idea. He had an M249. He had a grenade. He had plenty of cover. He would kill that bastard and all the other. How could such a thought give him pleasure?

The combine troopers called in scanners, which were now taking pictures everywhere. The troopers were pulling ammo, grenades, even clothes off his dead comrades. They wre grouped so close together. God must be smiling on John. He smiled evilly as he set himself up on the nearest pile of garbage, about 10 feet high, hiding behind an old refrigerator. Well, this time he wouldn’t disappoint God. He tried to be as quiet as possible, setting up the bipod on the m249. Then he got ready. Pulled the pin, let the detonator fall to the ground, quietly counting off in his head.
One Mississippi…
Two Mississippi…
Three Mississippi…
Then he threw the grenade, with all his strength, and got down, flat on his stomach, a piece of metal biting into him, giving him what must be a deep scratch. He heard a soft tink! Tink! Tink!
A second later, there was a deafening roar, a sound that must be heard for miles. He got up, a strange whoooooooooosh in his ears. Then he saw the combine troopers, Many were still, not moving, one was trying to get up, but kept falling down for some reason. Another was holding his gut. A scant few were running for cover. Then John closed his hand around the trigger, and squeezed.

Oh jeez! He thought. He couldn’t keep the bullets on target, and he could barely see over the muzzle flash. He let go of the trigger, then squeezed again, but shorter this time. The difference was noticeable. A combine fell, almost gracefully through the air, like a ballerina. John didn’t care. He kept pulling off burst after burst, finishing the wounded, and taking down all the troops before they made it to cover. The scanners had whizzed off a long time ago. Then john realized that his shoulder hurt. The stock had been biting into hi shoulder as he fired, hitting it like a boxing punch each time a bullet left the barrel.And he had been pulling the trigger for 5 seconds now, but it wasn’t firing. He struggled to understand why, running off the options.

Is the safety on? He checked the side. It most definitely was not.
Is it jammed? He checked the mechanism. No bullet stuck there...
Hmmmmmmmm, what could it be? Oh wait, there’s no bullet in the chamber! It’s out of ammo! He automatically reached down for the clips on his belt, and was taking out the empty drum of bullets from the M249, when he realized he didn’t have the right kind of ammunition for this gun. He swore out loud. Then a voice from behind him said, ” That’s okay kid, we can always get more ammo.” It was Barney Calhoun.

I’ll write some more later, guys!

 

[63]

looks good I like the mississippis

 

[Z|insane]

Awesome so far.

 

[adulus]

woohoo! some peeps liked it!

I'll be writing it on a pretty much "whenever i feel like writing for a lil while" basis, so it might be an hour or a month b4 the next page.

 

[adulus]

John grinned weakly back at him. Suddenly, he felt so tired. He just wanted to sleep. His vision became blurred. Looking down just a moment, just to rest his head, and look away from the blinding light of the sun. He saw something red. He stammered “I just…just…”
He gulped and tried again”I…ugh…” He closed his eyes and knew no more.

Briefly he heard some voices. He couldn’t open his eyes though. He was so tired, and sleep was so good. He didn’t understand the voices. They mumbled something about morphine and there was a sudden pain in his gut. Then he fell asleep again.

He woke up with a headache. He didn’t open his eyes yet. Oh jeez, such a pain between his eyes. It started to go away though. He smelled a sharp, pungent odor. It smelled like the alcohol his mom used to put on his cuts and made him squirm so much. The thought of his mom took away any happiness he was still clinging to.
He could still remember that terrifying night. He had been asleep just barely (he was a fairly light sleeper) When he heard a slight hiss and crackle as of electricity. He dismissed it as nothing and tried to go back to sleep. Then came the scream. The scream of his mother. He bolted to his parent’s room. He hesitated at the door a moment, because his parent’s room had been off-limits to him for some time now. He decided that the scream took precedence over some silly rule. Oh, how many times had he wished he had decided not to open the door? He opened it to the most haunting image in his entire life. His dad had, instead of a head, some grotesque thing that looked like a cross betweem a frog and a hamster but 3 times bigger. Then he looked at his mom. It gave him a shiver just thinking about what he saw next. He mom was disemboweled, her guts all over the floor. And his dad had foot-long claws instead of fingers, bloody claws, drenched in the blood of the one he promised to stand by for the rest of his life. He could hear his dad’s muffled voice, “Oh god, run John! It’s controlling me! I…killed her. What the hell am I?” He thought whatever his dad had turned into was as surprised as him. Or time just slowed down. He stood bolted to floor for a moment, looking at this grotesque scene. The zombie didn’t walk. It didn’t run. It lurched towards him like Frankenstein. Then he screamed, and ran. He got his sister, practically carried here out the front door. She was half-asleep, and thought he was pulling a prank. Then John and her saw the headcrab, as he learned they were called. It nearly got him. He was surprised it could leap that high and that far.

I wrote a lil more, but was interrupted. Here's what ya get.

 

[adulus]

He ran scared to the only place he could think of, the police, his sister one step behind him. Along the way they saw more strange creatures, and they outran every one of them with their fear and adrenaline. By the time they got to the station they reeked of sweat and fear. What they saw frightened them even more. The station was burning. Police cars were mostly burning too, but a couple were gone. Still, he went inside. Why? Why couldn’t he have just given up and gone to his uncle’s or something? But he couldn’t think straight he told himself. His parents had just been taken away from him, and more than anything, he didn’t want his sister or himself to die. He just wanted someone with them, anyone to help them. So he opened the door. They went inside. He could hear his sister’s teeth chattering with fear. There was one lamp still on inside, making it more scary, more surreal than if it had been total darkness. There were 4 bodies, some grotesquely mangled, One just laying back in his seat, blood running off the seat and onto to already blood-drenched floor. He looked around again. “He-he-hello!” he yelled, stammering a bit, he realized his teeth were chattering, too. There was no answer. Moving a little bit inside, a little shine from the desk drawer of the dead guy in his seat caught his attention. He walked over to it. Just then, he heard a loud crackling noise like electricity behind him. He turned around again, dreading what he would see. There was a thing that look like a green monkey, but what was weirder was it’s eye. It had only one, huge, red eye. It was crackling electricity. ‘The gun’, a voice said inside his head. He tried to remember what a gun was again. ‘The gun…’ The voice said again, ‘Inside the desk!’ He whipped around again, took the gun out of the drawer, and fired at the alien. Or rather pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Things were happening so fast, and yet so slow. He hadn’t yet fired a gun, and had never learned much about them. But he looked on the side. There was a little switch, with two options: Safety, and Semi-Auto. He figured the gun was broken already, so he flicked the switch, aimed, and fired again. He hadn’t really expected it to fire, so when it did, he wasn’t ready. It nearly flew out of his hand. This gun was a .357 magnum, he learned later. The monkey-thing’s head exploded in green blood and gore, some of it getting on him. He vaguely registered that the stuff was gross. A bolt of electricity flew from the hand of the monkey-thing, and hit his sister. He screamed, “NO!” The monkey-thing fell down on it’s back, dead. He ran over to his sister. She was twitching and convulsing, and she couldn’t talk. Her pajamas were soiled, and the stench of her was almost overwhelming. There was a blackened hole in her pajamas, where the bolt had hit. She tried to talk, but words wouldn’t come out right. “I…ju…ust…moth…die…hurk” And she starting coughing, so bad, such a bad noise. He didn’t know what to do; so she just coughed a while. Then she died. Just stopped coughing, and he could literally felt the life draining out of her, felt the muscles relax in her body, almost one, by one. Then she stopped breathing. “NO!” He yelled again. He dug into here neck, looking for a pulse. It was there for a moment, weak and irregular. Then it stopped too. “Sarah…no…” He whispered. Then the door opened again. He raised the big hangun to the door, but it was shaking so bad.
“Whoa, don’t shoot, brother. I hear shouts and a gunshot here.” Said the man standing in the doorway. He had a funny accent, and his head was bald. He was slightly overweight. These he all thought. He didn’t care. The man said again, hesitating, “What happened here?” He tried to think. He’d picked up the gun. That he remembered clearly. Was that before or after the thing just suddenly appeared out of nowhere? He tried to explain “That thing…my sister…I…it…” The man cut him off, “It’s ok. I think I see what happened. We must get out of here! I have a few other survivors with me. We just may get through all this. But to come,you must do one thing. ONLY step were I step. Not even one inch to the side. I have traps, you see, and I know the way through. But you must follow me EXACTLY. Oh, I haven’t told you my name yet. Call me…Father Gregori.” He motioned him out the door. He didn’t remember things clearly from that point on. He had said to Gregori, “I’m John”. He remembered running through the forest, and he remembered getting on a train in a city street. He didn’t remember much more, just waking up the next morning on a cot inside a dark cellar. He was told he had joined the Resistance.

He snapped out of his reverie, cursing himself for falling into it so long. He still hadn’t opened his eye’s but he could still sense it was lighter outside. He tried to go back to sleep, pushing memories and thought away for awhile. But eventually he realized he wasn’t asleep, just lying around trying not to think. He opened his eye’s now. There was a big red eye almost touching his face. And a green body under it that look like a monkey. He screamed.