[Fic] Interference, or a Shaman's Guide to Quantum Mechanics (6/12)
Note: Posting this here this time because LJ's all fucked up and I can't get it into the moderation queue at BSH, I keep getting error messages. BUT IT MUST BE POSTED NOW I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER. D:
Title: Interference, or a Shaman’s Guide to Quantum Mechanics (6/12)
Pairing: Howard/Vince pre-slash, Jack/Adair (AU doppelgangers) established relationship
Fandom: Boosh/Half-Life 2
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror/Adventure/Romance
Summary: Vince Noir, Zombie Slayer.
Word Count: 7150 (this chapter), +30,000 (total)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ALIENS, ridiculous pseudo-science.
Disclaimer: Boosh belongs to Julian and Noel and Baby Cow, Half-Life 2 belongs to Valve.
Author’s note: I’m so sorry this is so long in coming! It’s actually been more or less written for … months, but not ready to post, and I was distracted by schoolwork, writing other things, etc. But here it is. And chapter 7 is not finished but is about halfway written, and hopefully it won’t take as long as this one did.
Previously: Chapter 1: London / Chapter 2: City 14 / Chapter 3: Tesseract / Chapter 4: Lambda / Chapter 5: Arabelle
Since the story's getting a bit complicated now and there's been such a long time, last time we saw Vince (in Chapter 4), he'd teamed up with Adair, Roxanne, and Tessler, and they'd discovered something unpleasant in a supply depot in Elephant & Castle.
Chapter Six: Mort
Far distant eyes look out through yours.
Something secret steers us both.
We shall not name it.
The All-Knowing Vortigaunt’s Poem, Half-Life 2
“Get back outside, now, Vince!” Adair stepped in front of him, raising his rifle. “Tessler, your torch!”
Vince backed up swiftly, pushing the door further open and half-falling against the metal landing of the stairs. Just as he pulled himself up again on the railing, there was an angry roar from deep inside the substation, and a plastic crate was thrown across the room, hitting a wall not far from where Adair was standing. Tessler’s torchlight swung rapidly across the darkness of the room, and finally illuminated a slow-moving, stooped, bloated creature that was shuffling towards them. Is this a zombie then? Vince wondered, half-hysterical. Roxanne didn’t do it justice.
“Shit!” Roxanne shouted, starting to shoot. Something separated from the back of the zombie and launched itself at them. It looked like the headcrab he’d just encountered, but it was bigger, and black. It made a loud hissing noise. Roxanne fired a spray of bullets at it before it crumpled into a heap right at her feet.
Meanwhile, Adair was pumping shot after shot towards the slouched figure that was still steadily, almost painfully, approaching them. Tessler turned to Vince and threw the torch towards him, and he just managed to catch it. “Keep the light on it!” she ordered, and began firing herself.
Another headcrab - why were there so many? - pounced at them, but Adair quickly caught it beneath one of his boots, and shot it at close range, killing it. The zombie slumped closer, and Adair swore and began to reload his shotgun. With a shout, Roxanne ran up to the zombie and hit it, hard, with the butt of her machine gun. It gave a final groan and collapsed on the ground, letting out one last sick sound that might have been a laugh before it was completely silent.
Vince sagged against the railing with relief. Then he heard a chilling hissing noise, and something almost like a whip arcing through the air, and a headcrab leapt towards them from the darkness and landed on Tessler. Startled, and acting on instincts he hadn’t even known he possessed, he swiped at it with the torch in one hand and his stun baton in the other, and managed to knock it off of her. He lost sight of it for a minute in the darkness, and then found it again with the torchlight, and Roxanne shot it before it could attack again.
“Oh fuck,” Vince whispered, and slumped against the railing, feeling dizzy from the sudden adrenaline rush.
“Thanks,” Tessler said, and sagged to the ground. The headcrab had lashed at her and there was a nasty-looking cut across her cheek. Adair rushed forward and helped her sit up.
“That type of headcrab is toxic,” he explained to Vince. He fumbled through his pack, and pulled out a small bottle and a syringe. “You’ll be okay,” he told her.
“How the fuck did that thing get in here?” Roxanne asked. “The place was locked shut.”
“Well, there’s probably an entrance somewhere that connects the substation to the underground,” Adair replied. “The zombie must have broken through. I’ve heard the poison ones are pretty damn strong.” He threw the syringe away. “Sit there for a minute,” he told Tessler. “Roxanne, why don’t you stop pacing and clean her cut for her or something? Vince, let me see that torch.”
Vince stepped over Tessler’s legs into the substation and handed the torch to Adair. They poked around, avoiding the mess of the poison zombie’s ruined body, and soon enough found a stack of crates piled up against a wall. Adair pried them open and began sorting through their contents.
“Oh, genius,” he said abruptly. He pulled out a strange-looking pair of black goggles and held them aloft with an air of triumph. “Night vision! I’m havin’ these.” He slid them over his head, the lenses just resting above his forehead, and gave Vince a jaunty salute.
“Oooh,” Vince said appreciatively. He peered inside the box. Damn it! He’d felt like something was missing from his outfit this morning, but he hadn’t thought of goggles. It was perfect. “There aren’t any more in there?”
“Oi, don’t go copying my look,” Adair said, elbowing him. He reached inside the crate, pulled something out, and hummed thoughtfully. “Come here,” he said to Vince. “Arms up!” Confused, Vince did as he said, and Adair slipped a belt around his waist. No, it wasn’t just a belt - it was also a holster, with a gun in it. Vince pulled it out curiously and looked at it. It was a short, compact silver pistol with a black rubber grip. The words Chief's Special were written down the side of the barrel. “I don’t have time to show you how to use it right now,” Adair said. “But just in case you need it …”
Vince glanced again at the crumpled body of the zombie, and slid the gun back in its holster.
Tessler stood, leaning against the door for support. “I’m feeling better,” she announced.
Amongst the supplies, Adair found a courier bag, which he gave to Vince, and then he began to divide up the rest of the supplies in the crate between them. When they had taken everything they could carry, Vince slipped the pack over his shoulder - and lord, it was terribly drab, Howard would just love it - and eager to get out of this stuffy place, pushed the door open.
“Vince - wait for us!”
It was too late, however. He was aware of something hovering a few feet in front of him outside, and then there was a clicking noise and a bright light flashed, blinding him. He stumbled backwards, blinking, and behind him, Roxanne swore. “Shit! Scanners!”
Someone - Adair? - pushed him aside and he heard a few gunshots, following by an irritating beeping noise. “God damn thing,” Adair muttered, and there was another gunshot, and something sizzled, exploded, and crashed. It was like the noise the telly made that time Howard got angry and threw it across the room when Vince had been teasing him about getting all of the questions wrong on QI.
Vince blinked again, rubbing his eyes. His eyesight seemed to be returning, slowly, but there was a black spot hovering erratically in his vision.
“They’ve tracked us down, then,” Tessler said.
“What was that thing?” Vince asked, venturing forward. Whatever it had been, all he could see now were bits of broken, seared metal.
“It’s a Scanner. They monitor people’s movements … basically, it took a photo of you,” Adair said.
“Oh, like CCTV,” Vince said. He imagined a picture of himself - most likely dirty-faced and limp-haired, with a stupid, surprised expression, sitting on some dictator’s desk. I really hate this place, he decided.
“We’re going to have to ditch the APC,” Adair continued. “Too noticeable. We’re not far from the factory, anyway.” He looked at Tessler. “You feel up to running?”
“I’m fine, I already told you.”
“Okay. Let’s go then!”
As they passed down St. George’s Rd., they could hear the sounds of distant gunfire. By the time they’d reached Southwark it had petered out. Adair, Tessler, and Roxanne soon slowed to a halt, and crouched down behind a dumpster. Roxanne took out her little binoculars. Not far away, past a long stretch of what had clearly once been a nicely maintained lawn, but was now an overgrown wilderness of weeds and sad looking trees, was an old and formerly majestic building. It had a grand dome which was in terrible disrepair, and all around it was surrounded by a wall made from the shining black metal that Vince had come to recognize as Combine-built. Part of the wall had been blown away, it looked like. It was there that Roxanne was looking, and suddenly she smirked and turned back to them. “I see them. Looks like we missed the main event.”
“Everything’s okay?” Adair asked, standing up.
“Yeah, they’re just milling about. Let’s go.”
Vince followed them across the weedy expanse towards the factory. The place looked familiar to him, but it wasn’t somewhere he’d ever been. He was pretty sure it hadn’t originally been a factory though.
As they neared the other Resistance fighters, who were gathered near two large, antique canons not far from the front entrance, Adair, clearly impatient, broke out into a run. “Where’s Jack?” he called out to the nearest of the bunch. “I need to see Jack!”
People turned towards them at the sound of his voice. They were dressed similarly to Roxanne and Tessler, and they were all carrying various weapons. Someone shouted, “It’s Adair! Somebody fetch Jack.”
From within the crowd a figure emerged, and Adair made a beeline towards him. They caught each other in an embrace and kissed. For a minute, Vince’s only thought was Hell, I look sort of like a moron when I’m kissing from this angle … or at least he does. And then …
Then he realized.
The person Adair called Jack was Howard.
λ
He supposed, in the end, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. If there was another Vince here, there almost certainly had to be another Howard. And of course they would know each other. Vince couldn’t imagine life without Howard.
But … not like this. Vince stood silently, watching this alternate version of himself be reunited with this other Howard, and gradually became aware of the fact that his whole face, even his ears, were flushing. He pressed his lips tightly together. Of all the weird things he had seen today, this might be the one he had the hardest time believing.
They'd finally stopped kissing, and were speaking to each other in urgent, low voices. “Jack,” Adair was saying, “they’ve attacked Dalston Junction. When I left they were bringing in Dropships.”
‘Jack’ hadn’t seen Vince yet, and Vince found he was tremendously and uncharacteristically nervous regarding that inevitability. He hung back, shielding himself with Roxanne and Tessler, who looked a little bemused at his behavior.
Suddenly, from within the factory came a chorus of horrific shrieking. The entire crowd of people standing outside shuddered, and Vince stumbled, his heart thudding in terror. What next? he wondered. The screams didn’t sound human, nor did they sound like animals; nonetheless, there was something primal and raw and, worst of all, miserable about cacophony.
Adair had stiffened and his face had gone completely white. He looked like he might be sick. Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “The Stalkers …” he began to say.
“I know,” Adair said thickly, “the Stalkers are dying.”
The front doors of the factory opened, and between the factor’s majestic columns two men emerged. They were both peeling gloves off of their hands. One was thin, the other fat, and they both wore glasses. In a broad Irish accent, the thin one said, “It’s done! They’ll all be dead in a few minutes.”
“Pumped that shit into the saline tanks, rang the bell for their break, and once they were hooked up - wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Worked like a charm,” the other said with a grim smile.
Adair shivered. The last of the screams were fading now. Jack put one arm around his shoulders, and, for the first time since they had arrived, took his eyes off of Adair's face. And saw Vince.
Vince froze under his intense stare. Christy, but he really did look so much like Howard, only scruffier and thinner and there was a nasty-looking wound crossing his left eyebrow. It was the sort of thing Howard would have thought might make him look very rough and dashing, though if he'd actually gotten hurt like that he would have cried like a baby, like the time he'd snipped the very tip of his thumb off in art class because he'd been so intent on cutting his poster-paper perfectly straight. Vince’d had to hold his hand (the bleeding one) all the way to the infirmary, while Howard wondered aloud, sobbing, if his thumb would ever grow back.
“Who the hell is that?” Jack said, his voice bringing Vince back to the present.
“Oh,” Adair said wearily, with an almost preternatural calm, “I forgot.” His face had regained some color, and he gave an approximation of smile. “This is Vince. We found him in the White Hart. Uh, it seems he's my double from another world.” He laughed weakly.
Jack just stared at him, then at Adair, then back at Vince. “Huh,” he said.
“Um,” Vince said, at a loss for words, “... hello?”
Jack nodded slowly, then cleared his throat and stuck out his hand stiffly in a manner that was very Howard-like, in Vince's opinion. “Jack. Jack Brown.”
“Brown?” Vince said, taking his hand and feeling something a little like hysteria bubble up inside him. “Are you sure you don't mean Nutmeg? Or Faun?”
Jack looked at him like he was cracked. “Not as such,” he replied, and shook his head. “Well … welcome to City 14. Though I expect you'll be wanting to leave as soon as you can find a way.”
“Absolutely,” Vince muttered. “Then … that's that, then? If this were a movie, I'd expect you to burn me as a witch or decide I'm an alien spy or somethin'.”
“You sure you aren't?” Roxanne spoke up, with a smirk.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “It's just … nothing much surprises me anymore. Not even being told that a stranger who looks exactly like my partner's identical twin is actually from another world.”
“I s'pose that's understandable,” Vince said.
“Oh, by the way,” Adair said, and abruptly punched Jack, hard, on the arm. “No funny business.” He looked at Vince warily.
“You wound me,” Jack said, rubbing his arm tenderly. “No, literally, you do. Ow! You don't know your own strength, Sandy.” Adair smiled with satisfaction, then smacked him, lighter this time, and hissed, “Don't call me Sandy!” Vince thanked the gods, such as they were, that whoever had named him had not called him “Sandy”. It was the sort of name you gave to chess club presidents, not rock'n'roll stars. Or undiscovered style geniuses who worked as shopkeepers, even.
“Well?” called out the heavy man who had just exited the factory. “Are we going in? Or are we just going to stand around and socialize?”
λ
“Seriously. You actually jacked an APC?”
“Yeah! And ran down a couple of CPs on the bridge! It was well mad. You should've seen it, Jack."
“Yeah, you should have seen him whimpering afterwards, too,” Roxanne added.
“Keep it down, will you?” The Irish man looked irritated. They were standing in the vast entry way of the factory. Vince, standing close to Adair - he still wasn't sure what Stalkers were but those screams had been awful - was a little speechless at the sight of the place. He was pretty certain this must have been a museum at some point; the sort of place Howard would visit on one of his Sunday afternoon “educational trips”, and for all Vince knew, he probably had. From the ceiling there still hung, suspended, dusty, rusting fighter jets, some of them dangling rather precariously from only a few wire supports. Against the walls, partially covered by dropcloths, were other large, bulky objects; Vince thought in the dim light he could make out the shape of a tank. In the center of the atrium there was a large desk, and several other tables had been stood on their sides. They were riddled with bullet-holes. It was only then that Vince noticed the dead bodies - soldiers and ordinary people alike, slumped on the ground here and there, like broken toys.
“This way,” Jack said, and they headed towards the back, past the desk, where there were stairs and an elevator. As they climbed up the stairs, Adair held Vince back a little until Jack was out of earshot, and then he gave Vince a slightly calculating look. “So … this is just a guess, right … but your friend Howard - he's like my Jack, ain't he?”
Vince froze, and wondered if this was what Howard felt like when he had the chokes. “I … uh … well, yeah. But he's not my Howard. Not like Jack's yours, anyway,” he mumbled hurriedly.
Adair gave him a knowing smile.
“I mean it! He's my best friend.”
“Jack's my best friend, too. He's my best everything.”
Vince didn't reply. He felt too uncomfortable. In any case they had reached the next floor, where Jack, the other two men, Roxanne and Tessler, and several others were waiting for them. It was properly a mezzanine, overlooking the atrium below. They rounded a corner and entered another room, clearly meant to be a security center of some sort. The walls were lined with monitors and equipment. At one end there were thick, double-walled glass windows, which looked out into a large room the floor below, behind the atrium they had just exited. Vince wandered over to one and peered through it, then promptly shouted and jumped away.
“What the hell is that?”
Adair looked out as well, and frowned. “Those are the Stalkers.”
“Don't worry,” the Irish man said. “They're dead.”
They surely were dead. Vince wasn't sure how they could have ever possibly been alive. He thought the Overwatch soldier he'd seen in the street had looked terrifyingly inhuman but that was nothing compared to these … people. They must have been people once, he thought. Their wrecked and starved bodies looked vaguely humanoid, but, he realized with a creeping horror, they didn't have hands, and their legs ended in strange metal stumps. Above their puckered, withered mouths, a weird metal plate covered their eyes and part of their skulls.
And there were hundreds of them, all piled up in heaps on the floor of this massive room below them.
Adair had turned his back to the scene, his arms crossed and his face dark and moody now. Vince wanted ask what the hell these things were and how they could possibly even exist, but Adair's expression made him think better of it.
“Right,” Jack said. He and a few others were hunched over a computer, looking through what appeared to be blueprints. “There's a storage area on the lower level, beneath the atrium, same level the machines are on. It's filled with weapons and ammunition. We're going to take some people down there and see what we can find.”
Adair nodded and then noticed the still-sickened expression on Vince's face. His face softened. “Come on,” he said. “Let's get out of this place.”
λ
The basement was dim, the hallway at the base of the stairs lit only by buzzing, blinking lights. Vince could see the shapes of many large machines in the rooms beyond, packed tightly together, and the walls were lined with strange black pods all the way up to the ceiling. Adair told him that was where the Stalkers slept. They didn't go that way; instead they headed towards the front of the building. The walls of the corridors here bore more traces of the factory's past; it was covered thick with posters, the oldest ones on the bottom advertising exhibits and lectures. Over these had been pasted much newer ones, all bearing a strange symbol that Vince had seen but not really thought much on throughout the city; like a half moon or the socket of a wrench clenched around an orb. Several of the posters seemed to be directed at soldiers. “Remember,” one stated, “memory replacement is the first step towards rank privileges.”
They came to two massive steel doors, locked. Adair pulled the lid off of a keypad on the wall next to them, exposing a mass of wires beneath, then took from his bag a black plastic case containing some tiny tools. For a few minutes he fiddled with the wires, and then there was a sudden burst, and the doors slid open.
Nearly everyone let out a slight gasp, and Jack made a low whistle. The place was stacked high with crates and boxes. Adair walked over to the nearest pile and slid a crate out and pried it open. When he saw what was inside he laughed, and removed from it an orange rocket about the size of his forearm. “There's all the makings of an RPG launcher in here,” he said. “That might come in handy.”
Jack organized the Resistance members into groups and they began to search through the contents of the boxes. Vince slipped away. It was even more dark and depressing in there, and he felt exhausted. He couldn't stop thinking about those Stalker-things. He'd seen some pretty fucked up shit before, and quite a bit more in the last few hours, but something about them horrified him in a way he couldn't entirely fathom.
He stepped back into the corridor and shone his torch on the posters covering the walls again. The one closest to him was black with gold lettering - “CMB” - and there was a white dove flying across it. He peeled away one corner of it and pulled it mostly off. Beneath it, there was a floor map of the museum.
The Crimes Against Humanity exhibit is not recommended for children under the age of 16.
“Ain't this what Howard would call 'irony'?” he wondered aloud. For a second he could almost feel Howard's presence next to him. He was terribly lonely.
Next to the poster, there was a door. They'd passed several of them on the way here. Curious, he pressed on its handle and it gave beneath his hand, creaking. He turned the torch's light into the room; it looked like an old, disused office. Bit boring. He was about to close the door again, when he heard a slight noise, a squeaking shuffle. He flashed the light around the room again, but still didn't see anything.
Then he heard it again, and realized it wasn't coming from the office at all. It was behind him, in the hallway.
He spun around and dropped the torch in shock. There was a Stalker in the hallway.
“Oh, f-f-fuck,” he gasped, backing away.
The Stalker was hobbling, painfully slow, towards him, its horrible little stump arms swaying slightly with each movement, looking down towards the ground. Vince was frozen in terror, but as this truly sad and pathetic figured before him continued down the hall, he started to relax. After all, what could this thing possibly do to him? There was no way it could hurt him. It looked utterly helpless.
Vince cautiously took a step closer. He wondered if it could talk. “Hello?” he whispered.
The Stalker stopped, its face still pointed downwards. Vince watched it with curiosity. It must have heard him, mustn't it? Maybe it really couldn't speak.
Suddenly, the Stalker let out a high-pitched, wordless shriek. Vince shouted in fright, lost his balance, and fell backwards, hitting the floor hard. This turned out to be a bit of luck, as at that moment the Stalker's head snapped upwards and a red beam of light, like a laser sight, shot out from the metal plate covering its face, and melted a hole in the wall behind where Vince had been standing.
Vince scrambled to his feet and took off in a dash back towards the storage room doors. The others, hearing the Stalker's scream, had just reached the entrance themselves as Vince rushed to it.
“What the --”
“I thought they were all dead!”
Adair grabbed Vince by the arm and pulled him into the room. Vince turned his head and saw the Stalker rounding the corner towards them.
Jack pushed his way to the front. He was loading a round, ribbed metal slug into a ridiculously futuristic-looking gun. He raised the gun and fired it, and a glowing orb of light sped from the muzzle of the gun, bouncing against the walls of the corridor until it hit its target. The Stalker's body glowed, and then it seemed to actually float for a moment, before it disintegrated into nothing.
“Shit,” Vince said, feeling very wobbly.
“Are you all right?” Adair asked.
“Slattery, Morris, I thought you two had taken care of them all,” Jack said to the Irishman and his companion.
“Jesus Christ, we thought so too. That one must not have come and gotten hooked up with the others.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a minute,” Adair said to Vince. He looked like he might need to as well.
“Calm down, it's dead,” the man called Morris said.
“You don't understand,” Adair muttered. “You didn't work alongside those things for years and see your friends disappear and come back like that and know that you were probably next.”
“Maybe we should get out of here,” Jack said. He laid a shaking hand on Adair's back. “There could be more wandering around loose.”
“Yeah, let's get out of here,” Vince said weakly.
In teams, they carried up crates of weapons and ammo to the atrium and distributed it among the people still waiting outside.
“What’s next?” Vince asked, once they were mercifully out of the place and in the open air.
Jack looked thoughtful. He pointed north. “See that radio tower?” Vince nodded. “That's where we think their communication hub is. If we can secure it, we'll be able to restore radio contact with the base, and see what happened there.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around at the Resistance members gathered in front of the factory. “I think … I think we should split up for now.”
“Split up?” Slattery asked. “Is that really wise?”
“Right now, I think we’ll have a better chance if we’re in smaller, more mobile groups.” He pulled a folded map from his pack and opened it up. “Look,” he said, “Slattery, Morris, I think you two should take a group to the hospital here near the river.” He pointed to St. Thomas’ on the map. “We can get medical supplies there. I wouldn’t doubt there’s a bunch of Combine holed up there, as well. Does that sound good to you?” Slattery looked thoughtful, and nodded.
Christy, Vince thought. Howard would love this. Howard had gone through a brief phase when they were still in school when he’d been obsessed with RISK and reading biographies of war heroes. That was before he’d decided he wasn't quite cut out for that type of revolution, and stuck to fighting the system with words and music rather than bullets. And he calls me flighty.
Jack gestured for Roxanne and Tessler to come over to him. “I want you two to take charge of the factory.”
“How will we communicate if there’s an emergency, until you get the radios working again?”
“Flare guns!” Adair said suddenly, and started looking through some of the crates of weaponry. “I swear I saw some … here they are!”
“Right,” Jack said, handing them out. Vince was surprised to have one pressed upon him. “Don’t use them unless you really need help, right?” They all nodded. Vince put the flare gun away inside his bag.
Besides, Jack, Adair, and himself, about five others joined the radio tower group. Vince waved goodbye to Roxanne and Tessler as they left them behind, wondering if he'd ever see them again. Adair, an RPG slung over his shoulder, slung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him along. “Stick with me,” he said to Vince. “I'm going to show you how to use that gun on the way there, all right?”
λ
“Okay - see the television sitting near that open window there on the second floor? Try aiming for that.”
Vince raised his pistol, lined up the sight, and pulled the trigger. The screen was hit dead center and the television fell over with a fizzle and a crash. Funny - just before it had hit he swore the screen had flashed on … and he'd seen a man's face …
“Pretty good,” Adair said. “Looks like you're a natural.”
“Told you I'd played Duck Hunt.”
“Hey!” someone shouted from the front of their group. “Zombies up ahead!”
They looked up, and Vince saw a slow-moving group of blood-stained figures shuffling towards them from up the street.
“Try shooting them,” Adair said. Vince raised his gun.
Before he could fire though, a burst of green lightning arced through the air. It hit the zombies all at once and they fell, spasming, to the ground.
Adair gasped. “Was that --?”
Jack finished for him: “It has to be a Vortigaunt!”
From the alleyway that the light had come from, two figures appeared. One was a tall, fairly unremarkable-looking man, wearing ragged clothing. The other, however, was something truly bizarre - a great, stooped leathery creature. It had thin, wiry muscles and hoofed feet, and appeared to possess only one eye - massive and glowing red, taking up most of its face.
“Don't worry,” Adair told him, “Vorts are friendly. They're on our side. But ...”
“Didn't think there were any left around here,” Jack finished for him.
The Vortigaunt and his companion approached them. There was something faintly familiar to Vince about the human - he was a gainly dark-skinned man with a thick moustache and bright white teeth.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, and Vince heard his voice continue in his head - I go by many names … and he groaned a little. Really? He waited with baited breath.
But, “I am known as Clarence,” the man said simply. Some things, Vince thought, were better off being different here. Or at least, they were less time-consuming.
Next the Vortigaunt spoke, in oddly accented but otherwise perfect English, which for some reason surprised Vince. “We heard of the Uprising and thought we might assist.” His - he sounded male, anyway - voice was gravelly and there was a strange, sing-song rhythm to it; he stressed syllables unusually, and his sibilants were long and drawn out. Vince thought it sounded wonderfully weird and beautiful.
“We heard the Vortigaunts in this area had been rounded up and sent to Nova Prospekt,” Adair said. “Did you escape from the Vortigaunt camp when it was raided?”
“We both did,” Clarence said. “We've been hiding out not far from the city since then. When we saw the portal storms, we decided to investigate, and soon we started hearing warnings from the Overwatch Voice ….”
“We know your numbers are few,” the Vortigaunt broke in, blinking his great, fiery eye, “but your will is strong. We will help you in whatever small ways we can.”
Vince was fairly impressed. He has a sort of Yoda vibe about him, he thought. I like it.
“Well then, we're glad to have your help,” Jack said.
Clarence entered into a discussion with Jack and Adair, and Vince slipped around them so that he was walking next to the Vortigaunt. “Hello there,” he said with cheerful curiosity. “I'm Vince.”
The Vortigaunt turned his head towards him. There were two tiny but sharp teeth protruding from his mouth, giving him an almost babyish air. “I am pleased to make the acquaintance of the Vince,” it said.
Vince laughed. “What're you called?”
“We Vortigaunts do not use individual appellations amongst ourselves. We are coterminous.”
“Oh … sorry to hear that,” Vince said. He wasn't certain what 'coterminous' meant exactly, but it sounded painful.
The Vortigaunt gave a breathy grunt that Vince thought might have been a chuckle. “However, sometimes humans like to give us names. It does not matter to us either way. The Clarence has never bothered to give me one, but if you wish to, you may.”
Vince beamed, delighted. “Really? Hm. Let's see.” He bit his lip, his face screwed up in concentration. “Ahh … why don't I call you … I know!” He grinned at the Vortigaunt. “Mortimer! Mort the Vort.”
The Vortigaunt bowed his head. “The Vince honors me with such a name.”
“So Mort - you're from another world, right?”
“It is true that I was not born on this rock. My place of origins is very distant.”
“So … you've never heard Gary Numan, then?”
λ
They were nearing the radio tower. Vince had filled Mort in on the highlights of Gary's musical catalog, and in turn Mort had sung a Vortigaunt song for him, with a low voice and in his native language, which was in turns both harsh and melodic.
“That was well genius, Mort.”
“I thank the Vince for being such a receptive audience. It was written by our most evocative poet. If only he could see us now, but alas, he fell back into the Vortessance long before we escaped our damnable captivity.”
“Captivity?”
“Yes. Vortigaunt-kind spent many - centuries, by your understanding of time - in enslavement. It was only until recently that we slipped our yoke, thanks to the efforts of the Freeman.”
“The free man? Who's that?”
Mort blinked his eye. “One who was brought here … by the same entity you were, perhaps.”
Vince shook his head in confusion. “I don't know what you're on about. I wasn’t brought here by anyone.”
“You came through a portal storm, you said?”
“Sure. At least, that's what they told me, anyway.” He nodded towards Adair and Jack.
“It seems to me that you have been brought here for a purpose.”
“What, like fate or somethin'?”
Mort seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Some might call it fate. But fate has henchman, does it not?” He made that funny laugh again, and then gestured with one claw. “It appears we have arrived at our destination.”
Vince looked up and saw that they had, indeed, reached the radio tower. Its control base was surrounded on three sides by other buildings and a small courtyard; but more importantly, all points of access were cordoned off by walls of blue, staticky light, emerging from receivers connected the walls of the neighboring houses.
“I thought Pen Pen took down all the force fields,” Jack said.
“They've got to be running it off of an alternative power source, something off the grid,” Adair answered. “Let's take a look around.”
They followed the perimeter of the closest bordering building. All of its entrances were sealed shut with some sort of black clamp covering the doorknobs. The windows were boarded up from the inside. However, when they slipped into a grassy alleyway on the farthest side of the building, Adair crouched down and called out to the others.
“There's a basement window here that isn't boarded up. I think I might be able to get in through here.”
“That's a pretty small window,” Jack said.
“I can fit through. You'll have to stay behind, though.”
Jack frowned.
“Sorry! It's not my fault you're a big, hulking Northerner.”
“Someone has to go with you,” Jack said, and looked at the others who had come with them, but they all shrugged sheepishly. None of them looked like they’d fit through the window, either.
“This is very dangerous,” Clarence spoke up. “There might be soldiers in there. Or at the very least, there might be an infestation. You must take care.”
“Take him with you,” Jack said, nodding towards Vince. “He'll fit, too.”
“Huh?” Vince said, surprised. “Me?”
“Jack, this is kind of a stealth operation … no offense, Vince, but you're not very stealthy.”
Vince had no argument for this. Stealth was, indeed, not his thing in the least.
“I'm not sending you in there alone. You need some kind of back up, and Vince isn't a bad shot, at least.”
Abruptly, Mort broke in: “The Vince is capable. Take him with you.”
Adair pursed his lips and then sighed in defeat. “Fine.” He looked at Vince. “You okay with this?”
Vince was a little taken aback. “Capable” wasn't a word used to describe Vince Noir very often. But … “Okay. Let's do it.” I've done crazier things than this before, anyway.
Adair nodded and smashed the window in with the butt of his shotgun, then kicked out any remaining shards. Then he handed the RPG to Jack. “Too bulky for this,” he said. He slid his shotgun strap over his shoulder and then pulled his pistol out of his jacket and took the safety off. He got down on his hands and knees and peered through the window. “Looks clear in there,” he said confidently. “I'm going in.”
“Be careful,” Jack said, and then grinned mischievously and swatted Adair's upturned bottom.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing, Brown? Keep your hands to yourself!” Adair shouted, but as he lowered his legs through the windows he was smirking. He let himself drop to the floor. “Come on, Vince.”
Vince followed suit, shooting a wary glance up at Jack. “Don't even think about it,” he warned. Jack held up his hands innocently. Vince slid through the window and dropped, stumbling a bit as he landed. Mort stuck his head through the window.
“Keep a watchful eye. This place has a stench of death to it.”
Vince frowned. “You waited until I was already inside to come out with that?”
Adair groaned. “Get your gun out and stop whinging.”
λ
They quickly found their way up to the first floor from the basement. There had been a board nailed across the cellar door, but luckily it had been nailed on the inside. A voice much like Howard's spoke up in Vince's head: Don't be so thankful. Maybe there's something upstairs they were trying to keep out.
Upstairs it was nearly as dim as it had been in the basement, with just little shafts of grey light filtering in through the boarded up windows. And Mort had been right; there was a funny smell to this place. Like rotting food. Well nasty.
“This way,” Adair said, nodding his head down the hallway. No wonder it smelled in here; the place was filthy, old trash and bits of debris covering the floor like a carpet. It had once been a block of flats; some of the doors were open, and they could see overturned tables and chairs inside. There was a thick-coating of dust on everything. The floorboards creaked unsteadily beneath their feet. Vince didn’t think anyone had lived here in a long time.
They reached the end of the corridor and Adair peered around the corner. “All right,” he said, smiling a little. “Look there - that's our way in.” Down the end of this hallway there was a door, half off of its hinges, like something had broken it open. On the other side they could just make out the radio control room.
“Come on,” Adair said, “let's get this over wi --”
They had only just started down the hallway when overhead there was an ominous creaking noise. Adair and Vince froze, and Adair raised his gun.
“You think somebody's up there?” Vince whispered, and then the ceiling fell in on them. Adair shouted and pushed him back, then started firing his pistol. It took Vince a moment to realize why; a pile of headcrabs had fallen from the floor above, like a disgusting piñata. From above he heard a groan, looked up, and gasped. There was a zombie lying near the hole in the ceiling above them, its arms dangling down. He raised his own gun and shot it, and it fell through the hole onto the floor in front of him, dead.
“Vince, come on,” Adair said. He'd disposed of all of the headcrabs, but upstairs they could hear further movement. “Let's get out of here before more show up.” Vince nodded and they sprinted down the hall towards the exit, and Adair kicked the door the rest of the way off its hinges and stepped out into the street, Vince following close behind him.
The lane was empty and the radio control tower was quiet. On the other side from where they were standing was the forcefield, beyond which Jack and the others were waiting, out of their sight.
“I don't see anybody,” Adair murmured. “It looks deserted.” He frowned, clearly uneasy.
“What's wrong?” Vince asked.
“Seems too easy, don't it?” Adair replied. His gun raised he edged carefully to the side, peering around the control room. He stopped and pointed at something. Vince walked over and saw that it was an APC, parked near the tower, and bizarrely there were cables attached to its engine, which disappeared around the back of the building. “That's probably the power source that the field's running off of. If we can unhook it, they should go down. Let's check it out.”
They started to make their way over to the APC. Vince tried to imitate Adair's stance, torn between feeling ridiculous and terrified out of his wits. If there hadn't just been a close encounter between his brains and the gaping maw of an alien lifeform, he'd probably be laughing, and even so there was a slight hysterical giggle building somewhere in the back of his throat.
Adair stopped. “Did you hear that?” He whispered. Vince listened and shook his head. He didn't hear a thing.
Adair's brow creased in consternation. “Something don't feel right.” He peered at the control room's door. “This could be a trap --”
The door suddenly burst open. Adair jumped and trained his gun on it. Vince backed away, expecting to see, just as Adair had predicted, a soldier standing in entrance. But it wasn't that … exactly.
Adair cried out, startled. “Shit! Vince! Shoot at it!”
What had exited the door of the control room wasn't a soldier, at least not anymore. It was a zombie who had once been a soldier. Suddenly the broken down door of the building they'd just exited was making a lot more sense. The thing moved fast - much faster than the other zombies Vince had seen, with a sort of awkward rolling gait, and it was running towards them. The sound Adair had heard, now much clearer, was the distorted crackling of the soldier's radio speaker, transmitting hisses of static and mechanized grunting.
Adair ran backwards, shooting at the zombie. Vince shot too, but in his panic he didn't seem to be quite as good as he'd been before.
“Vince! Get away, it's got a grenade!”
Sure enough, the zombie soldier had somehow coordinated its limbs enough to pull a grenade from inside its protective suit. Vince turned and fled, back towards the building they had just left. But where the hell was he going to go? Not back inside, it was just as bad in there as out here. He spotted a fire escape attached to the wall not far from the door; the lower rotted metal stairs had mostly broken off. Quickly, he jumped and just managed to pull himself up onto it, and just in time. The grenade, still clasped in the zombie's hand - apparently its thought process wasn't quite advanced enough to throw the thing - exploded, taking the zombie with it, thankfully. Above, the rusty fire escape Vince was clinging to creaked and, and then, after an agonizing second, collapsed with a crash.
Bonus Scene: Howard and Vince don’t go to Ravenholm
Howard: Tell me again why we’re going this way?
Vince: What? You said yourself - this is the most direct and easy path to our destination.
Howard: Yeah, but that was before all the people at Black Mesa East told us “we don’t go to Ravenholm anymore” with that creepy, haunted look in their eyes, wasn’t it?
Vince: Yeah, what was all that about?
Howard: Also, there was the fact that entrance to Ravenholm was all boarded and closed up. Looked a bit foreboding.
Vince: It was a bit of a struggle to get in, yeah.
Howard: And then there were those corpses at the city limits and that graffiti that said Turn back if you value your lives ...
Vince: I’m sure it’s nothing, though, Howard. Buck up.
Howard: I assure you, sir, I’m perfectly bucked up. Howard Moon can take care of himself. It’s you I’m worried about.
Vince: Me? Who’s the one who took out that weird crocodile monster that spat acid when we were hiding out in the sewers? While you cowered in the corner pissing yourself? Ruined my favorite shirt and all.
Howard: Shhh! What’s that noise?
Loudspeaker: Greetings, my children. I am Father Grigori. Welcome to Ravenholm. I think you’ll find it’s not … quite what it once was! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Howard: He sounds nice.
Vince: A bit mad maybe.
Loudspeaker: If you can make your way to the church, I’ll be waiting to help you escape to the other side of town. Make free use of my traps on your journey … I’m sure they’ll be … most useful! Ha ha ha!
Vince: Traps? For what exactly?
Howard: Oh dear. Oh … oh my.
Vince: What’s wrong? … Oh. That’s …
Howard: … quite a lot of zombies, isn’t it?
Loudspeaker: Fear not, my children. “He that endureth to the end shall be saved!”
Vince: On second thought, let’s take the long way round, Howard.
Howard: I am in complete agreement. Leg it!
Loudspeaker: Wait! “Whither goest though?” Come back!
Notes
The All-Knowing Vortigaunt's Poem
This is a long poem that a couple of Vortigaunts in the game will recite to you if you bug them enough. You can hear the whole thing here.
Different Types of Zombies
There are four types of zombies in HL2. There’s your standard zombie, slow, stumbling, etc; fast zombies, which are … fast … and scream a lot, and are skeletal; poison zombies, which are stooped over, really slow but strong, and carry extra headcrabs which can poison you; and “Zombines”, which are any Combine soldiers that get headcrabbed. They’re a little smarter than the other zombies are, probably because Combine soldiers are modified with computer enhancements.
The Munitions Factory/Imperial War Museum-London
I know, it's a little cheesy, but the site of the factory is in fact meant to be the London branch of the Imperial War Museum A little bit about the factory ideas … in one of the early versions of HL2’s storyline, there was supposed to be a stretch of gameplay in which the player toured the factory district of City 17, and there were child laborers and that sort of thing. Later on, this was scrapped for several reasons, in part because it was decided that the Combine would hinder human reproduction and so by the time HL2 takes place there are no more children. They have all grown up and people can’t reproduce because of a suppressing field which inhibits fetal growth in human beings.
Stalkers
Stalkers are rarely seen but are probably the creepiest “foes”, if you can call them that, in the game. The Combine regularly ships people off to Nova Prospekt and transforms them into these pitiful mindless beasts of labor. Basically, the plan is to turn all human beings either into transhuman soldiers or slaves … this is what the Combine does to every world it conquers. Most of the aliens fighting on the Combine's side are conquered species which have been similarly modified -- Hunters, Striders, Gunships, Dropships.
Slattery & Morris, Roxanne & Tessler, Clarence
Yes, these are meant to be Michael Smiley’s and Nick Frost’s characters from the Mint Royale video, heh. XD And come to think of it, I suppose Roxanne and Tessler are sort of alterna-Anthrax & Ebola/Neon & Ultra. I didn't really intend for it to be that way but it kind of works! And Clarence, of course, is Rudi.
Vortigaunts
Ah, I’ve been waiting so long to introduce Vortigaunts! One of my favorite things about HL2! They’re so cute. In HL1 Vorts are your enemies, but that’s because they’re enslaved by a creature called the Nihilanth, who is in turn enslaved by the Combine. Gordon inadvertently frees the Vorts at the end of HL1 by killing the Nihilanth, and so they have partnered with humans to join in taking down the Combine. They’re incredibly wise and they seem to be able to access a shared consciousness (the Vortessance).
Ravenholm
The bonus scene references a chapter in HL2 called “We Don’t Go to Ravenholm”, in which Gordon fights his way through a former Resistance town that was severely bombed with headcrab shells. The only survivor of Ravenholm is Father Grigori, a mad Russian priest, who has littered the town with complicated traps and has a tendency to quote the Bible a lot. I adore Grigori, but we won’t be seeing him in the actual story, so I wanted to put him in here somehow.
Title: Interference, or a Shaman’s Guide to Quantum Mechanics (6/12)
Pairing: Howard/Vince pre-slash, Jack/Adair (AU doppelgangers) established relationship
Fandom: Boosh/Half-Life 2
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror/Adventure/Romance
Summary: Vince Noir, Zombie Slayer.
Word Count: 7150 (this chapter), +30,000 (total)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ALIENS, ridiculous pseudo-science.
Disclaimer: Boosh belongs to Julian and Noel and Baby Cow, Half-Life 2 belongs to Valve.
Author’s note: I’m so sorry this is so long in coming! It’s actually been more or less written for … months, but not ready to post, and I was distracted by schoolwork, writing other things, etc. But here it is. And chapter 7 is not finished but is about halfway written, and hopefully it won’t take as long as this one did.
Previously: Chapter 1: London / Chapter 2: City 14 / Chapter 3: Tesseract / Chapter 4: Lambda / Chapter 5: Arabelle
Since the story's getting a bit complicated now and there's been such a long time, last time we saw Vince (in Chapter 4), he'd teamed up with Adair, Roxanne, and Tessler, and they'd discovered something unpleasant in a supply depot in Elephant & Castle.
Chapter Six: Mort
Far distant eyes look out through yours.
Something secret steers us both.
We shall not name it.
The All-Knowing Vortigaunt’s Poem, Half-Life 2
“Get back outside, now, Vince!” Adair stepped in front of him, raising his rifle. “Tessler, your torch!”
Vince backed up swiftly, pushing the door further open and half-falling against the metal landing of the stairs. Just as he pulled himself up again on the railing, there was an angry roar from deep inside the substation, and a plastic crate was thrown across the room, hitting a wall not far from where Adair was standing. Tessler’s torchlight swung rapidly across the darkness of the room, and finally illuminated a slow-moving, stooped, bloated creature that was shuffling towards them. Is this a zombie then? Vince wondered, half-hysterical. Roxanne didn’t do it justice.
“Shit!” Roxanne shouted, starting to shoot. Something separated from the back of the zombie and launched itself at them. It looked like the headcrab he’d just encountered, but it was bigger, and black. It made a loud hissing noise. Roxanne fired a spray of bullets at it before it crumpled into a heap right at her feet.
Meanwhile, Adair was pumping shot after shot towards the slouched figure that was still steadily, almost painfully, approaching them. Tessler turned to Vince and threw the torch towards him, and he just managed to catch it. “Keep the light on it!” she ordered, and began firing herself.
Another headcrab - why were there so many? - pounced at them, but Adair quickly caught it beneath one of his boots, and shot it at close range, killing it. The zombie slumped closer, and Adair swore and began to reload his shotgun. With a shout, Roxanne ran up to the zombie and hit it, hard, with the butt of her machine gun. It gave a final groan and collapsed on the ground, letting out one last sick sound that might have been a laugh before it was completely silent.
Vince sagged against the railing with relief. Then he heard a chilling hissing noise, and something almost like a whip arcing through the air, and a headcrab leapt towards them from the darkness and landed on Tessler. Startled, and acting on instincts he hadn’t even known he possessed, he swiped at it with the torch in one hand and his stun baton in the other, and managed to knock it off of her. He lost sight of it for a minute in the darkness, and then found it again with the torchlight, and Roxanne shot it before it could attack again.
“Oh fuck,” Vince whispered, and slumped against the railing, feeling dizzy from the sudden adrenaline rush.
“Thanks,” Tessler said, and sagged to the ground. The headcrab had lashed at her and there was a nasty-looking cut across her cheek. Adair rushed forward and helped her sit up.
“That type of headcrab is toxic,” he explained to Vince. He fumbled through his pack, and pulled out a small bottle and a syringe. “You’ll be okay,” he told her.
“How the fuck did that thing get in here?” Roxanne asked. “The place was locked shut.”
“Well, there’s probably an entrance somewhere that connects the substation to the underground,” Adair replied. “The zombie must have broken through. I’ve heard the poison ones are pretty damn strong.” He threw the syringe away. “Sit there for a minute,” he told Tessler. “Roxanne, why don’t you stop pacing and clean her cut for her or something? Vince, let me see that torch.”
Vince stepped over Tessler’s legs into the substation and handed the torch to Adair. They poked around, avoiding the mess of the poison zombie’s ruined body, and soon enough found a stack of crates piled up against a wall. Adair pried them open and began sorting through their contents.
“Oh, genius,” he said abruptly. He pulled out a strange-looking pair of black goggles and held them aloft with an air of triumph. “Night vision! I’m havin’ these.” He slid them over his head, the lenses just resting above his forehead, and gave Vince a jaunty salute.
“Oooh,” Vince said appreciatively. He peered inside the box. Damn it! He’d felt like something was missing from his outfit this morning, but he hadn’t thought of goggles. It was perfect. “There aren’t any more in there?”
“Oi, don’t go copying my look,” Adair said, elbowing him. He reached inside the crate, pulled something out, and hummed thoughtfully. “Come here,” he said to Vince. “Arms up!” Confused, Vince did as he said, and Adair slipped a belt around his waist. No, it wasn’t just a belt - it was also a holster, with a gun in it. Vince pulled it out curiously and looked at it. It was a short, compact silver pistol with a black rubber grip. The words Chief's Special were written down the side of the barrel. “I don’t have time to show you how to use it right now,” Adair said. “But just in case you need it …”
Vince glanced again at the crumpled body of the zombie, and slid the gun back in its holster.
Tessler stood, leaning against the door for support. “I’m feeling better,” she announced.
Amongst the supplies, Adair found a courier bag, which he gave to Vince, and then he began to divide up the rest of the supplies in the crate between them. When they had taken everything they could carry, Vince slipped the pack over his shoulder - and lord, it was terribly drab, Howard would just love it - and eager to get out of this stuffy place, pushed the door open.
“Vince - wait for us!”
It was too late, however. He was aware of something hovering a few feet in front of him outside, and then there was a clicking noise and a bright light flashed, blinding him. He stumbled backwards, blinking, and behind him, Roxanne swore. “Shit! Scanners!”
Someone - Adair? - pushed him aside and he heard a few gunshots, following by an irritating beeping noise. “God damn thing,” Adair muttered, and there was another gunshot, and something sizzled, exploded, and crashed. It was like the noise the telly made that time Howard got angry and threw it across the room when Vince had been teasing him about getting all of the questions wrong on QI.
Vince blinked again, rubbing his eyes. His eyesight seemed to be returning, slowly, but there was a black spot hovering erratically in his vision.
“They’ve tracked us down, then,” Tessler said.
“What was that thing?” Vince asked, venturing forward. Whatever it had been, all he could see now were bits of broken, seared metal.
“It’s a Scanner. They monitor people’s movements … basically, it took a photo of you,” Adair said.
“Oh, like CCTV,” Vince said. He imagined a picture of himself - most likely dirty-faced and limp-haired, with a stupid, surprised expression, sitting on some dictator’s desk. I really hate this place, he decided.
“We’re going to have to ditch the APC,” Adair continued. “Too noticeable. We’re not far from the factory, anyway.” He looked at Tessler. “You feel up to running?”
“I’m fine, I already told you.”
“Okay. Let’s go then!”
As they passed down St. George’s Rd., they could hear the sounds of distant gunfire. By the time they’d reached Southwark it had petered out. Adair, Tessler, and Roxanne soon slowed to a halt, and crouched down behind a dumpster. Roxanne took out her little binoculars. Not far away, past a long stretch of what had clearly once been a nicely maintained lawn, but was now an overgrown wilderness of weeds and sad looking trees, was an old and formerly majestic building. It had a grand dome which was in terrible disrepair, and all around it was surrounded by a wall made from the shining black metal that Vince had come to recognize as Combine-built. Part of the wall had been blown away, it looked like. It was there that Roxanne was looking, and suddenly she smirked and turned back to them. “I see them. Looks like we missed the main event.”
“Everything’s okay?” Adair asked, standing up.
“Yeah, they’re just milling about. Let’s go.”
Vince followed them across the weedy expanse towards the factory. The place looked familiar to him, but it wasn’t somewhere he’d ever been. He was pretty sure it hadn’t originally been a factory though.
As they neared the other Resistance fighters, who were gathered near two large, antique canons not far from the front entrance, Adair, clearly impatient, broke out into a run. “Where’s Jack?” he called out to the nearest of the bunch. “I need to see Jack!”
People turned towards them at the sound of his voice. They were dressed similarly to Roxanne and Tessler, and they were all carrying various weapons. Someone shouted, “It’s Adair! Somebody fetch Jack.”
From within the crowd a figure emerged, and Adair made a beeline towards him. They caught each other in an embrace and kissed. For a minute, Vince’s only thought was Hell, I look sort of like a moron when I’m kissing from this angle … or at least he does. And then …
Then he realized.
The person Adair called Jack was Howard.
λ
He supposed, in the end, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. If there was another Vince here, there almost certainly had to be another Howard. And of course they would know each other. Vince couldn’t imagine life without Howard.
But … not like this. Vince stood silently, watching this alternate version of himself be reunited with this other Howard, and gradually became aware of the fact that his whole face, even his ears, were flushing. He pressed his lips tightly together. Of all the weird things he had seen today, this might be the one he had the hardest time believing.
They'd finally stopped kissing, and were speaking to each other in urgent, low voices. “Jack,” Adair was saying, “they’ve attacked Dalston Junction. When I left they were bringing in Dropships.”
‘Jack’ hadn’t seen Vince yet, and Vince found he was tremendously and uncharacteristically nervous regarding that inevitability. He hung back, shielding himself with Roxanne and Tessler, who looked a little bemused at his behavior.
Suddenly, from within the factory came a chorus of horrific shrieking. The entire crowd of people standing outside shuddered, and Vince stumbled, his heart thudding in terror. What next? he wondered. The screams didn’t sound human, nor did they sound like animals; nonetheless, there was something primal and raw and, worst of all, miserable about cacophony.
Adair had stiffened and his face had gone completely white. He looked like he might be sick. Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “The Stalkers …” he began to say.
“I know,” Adair said thickly, “the Stalkers are dying.”
The front doors of the factory opened, and between the factor’s majestic columns two men emerged. They were both peeling gloves off of their hands. One was thin, the other fat, and they both wore glasses. In a broad Irish accent, the thin one said, “It’s done! They’ll all be dead in a few minutes.”
“Pumped that shit into the saline tanks, rang the bell for their break, and once they were hooked up - wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Worked like a charm,” the other said with a grim smile.
Adair shivered. The last of the screams were fading now. Jack put one arm around his shoulders, and, for the first time since they had arrived, took his eyes off of Adair's face. And saw Vince.
Vince froze under his intense stare. Christy, but he really did look so much like Howard, only scruffier and thinner and there was a nasty-looking wound crossing his left eyebrow. It was the sort of thing Howard would have thought might make him look very rough and dashing, though if he'd actually gotten hurt like that he would have cried like a baby, like the time he'd snipped the very tip of his thumb off in art class because he'd been so intent on cutting his poster-paper perfectly straight. Vince’d had to hold his hand (the bleeding one) all the way to the infirmary, while Howard wondered aloud, sobbing, if his thumb would ever grow back.
“Who the hell is that?” Jack said, his voice bringing Vince back to the present.
“Oh,” Adair said wearily, with an almost preternatural calm, “I forgot.” His face had regained some color, and he gave an approximation of smile. “This is Vince. We found him in the White Hart. Uh, it seems he's my double from another world.” He laughed weakly.
Jack just stared at him, then at Adair, then back at Vince. “Huh,” he said.
“Um,” Vince said, at a loss for words, “... hello?”
Jack nodded slowly, then cleared his throat and stuck out his hand stiffly in a manner that was very Howard-like, in Vince's opinion. “Jack. Jack Brown.”
“Brown?” Vince said, taking his hand and feeling something a little like hysteria bubble up inside him. “Are you sure you don't mean Nutmeg? Or Faun?”
Jack looked at him like he was cracked. “Not as such,” he replied, and shook his head. “Well … welcome to City 14. Though I expect you'll be wanting to leave as soon as you can find a way.”
“Absolutely,” Vince muttered. “Then … that's that, then? If this were a movie, I'd expect you to burn me as a witch or decide I'm an alien spy or somethin'.”
“You sure you aren't?” Roxanne spoke up, with a smirk.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “It's just … nothing much surprises me anymore. Not even being told that a stranger who looks exactly like my partner's identical twin is actually from another world.”
“I s'pose that's understandable,” Vince said.
“Oh, by the way,” Adair said, and abruptly punched Jack, hard, on the arm. “No funny business.” He looked at Vince warily.
“You wound me,” Jack said, rubbing his arm tenderly. “No, literally, you do. Ow! You don't know your own strength, Sandy.” Adair smiled with satisfaction, then smacked him, lighter this time, and hissed, “Don't call me Sandy!” Vince thanked the gods, such as they were, that whoever had named him had not called him “Sandy”. It was the sort of name you gave to chess club presidents, not rock'n'roll stars. Or undiscovered style geniuses who worked as shopkeepers, even.
“Well?” called out the heavy man who had just exited the factory. “Are we going in? Or are we just going to stand around and socialize?”
λ
“Seriously. You actually jacked an APC?”
“Yeah! And ran down a couple of CPs on the bridge! It was well mad. You should've seen it, Jack."
“Yeah, you should have seen him whimpering afterwards, too,” Roxanne added.
“Keep it down, will you?” The Irish man looked irritated. They were standing in the vast entry way of the factory. Vince, standing close to Adair - he still wasn't sure what Stalkers were but those screams had been awful - was a little speechless at the sight of the place. He was pretty certain this must have been a museum at some point; the sort of place Howard would visit on one of his Sunday afternoon “educational trips”, and for all Vince knew, he probably had. From the ceiling there still hung, suspended, dusty, rusting fighter jets, some of them dangling rather precariously from only a few wire supports. Against the walls, partially covered by dropcloths, were other large, bulky objects; Vince thought in the dim light he could make out the shape of a tank. In the center of the atrium there was a large desk, and several other tables had been stood on their sides. They were riddled with bullet-holes. It was only then that Vince noticed the dead bodies - soldiers and ordinary people alike, slumped on the ground here and there, like broken toys.
“This way,” Jack said, and they headed towards the back, past the desk, where there were stairs and an elevator. As they climbed up the stairs, Adair held Vince back a little until Jack was out of earshot, and then he gave Vince a slightly calculating look. “So … this is just a guess, right … but your friend Howard - he's like my Jack, ain't he?”
Vince froze, and wondered if this was what Howard felt like when he had the chokes. “I … uh … well, yeah. But he's not my Howard. Not like Jack's yours, anyway,” he mumbled hurriedly.
Adair gave him a knowing smile.
“I mean it! He's my best friend.”
“Jack's my best friend, too. He's my best everything.”
Vince didn't reply. He felt too uncomfortable. In any case they had reached the next floor, where Jack, the other two men, Roxanne and Tessler, and several others were waiting for them. It was properly a mezzanine, overlooking the atrium below. They rounded a corner and entered another room, clearly meant to be a security center of some sort. The walls were lined with monitors and equipment. At one end there were thick, double-walled glass windows, which looked out into a large room the floor below, behind the atrium they had just exited. Vince wandered over to one and peered through it, then promptly shouted and jumped away.
“What the hell is that?”
Adair looked out as well, and frowned. “Those are the Stalkers.”
“Don't worry,” the Irish man said. “They're dead.”
They surely were dead. Vince wasn't sure how they could have ever possibly been alive. He thought the Overwatch soldier he'd seen in the street had looked terrifyingly inhuman but that was nothing compared to these … people. They must have been people once, he thought. Their wrecked and starved bodies looked vaguely humanoid, but, he realized with a creeping horror, they didn't have hands, and their legs ended in strange metal stumps. Above their puckered, withered mouths, a weird metal plate covered their eyes and part of their skulls.
And there were hundreds of them, all piled up in heaps on the floor of this massive room below them.
Adair had turned his back to the scene, his arms crossed and his face dark and moody now. Vince wanted ask what the hell these things were and how they could possibly even exist, but Adair's expression made him think better of it.
“Right,” Jack said. He and a few others were hunched over a computer, looking through what appeared to be blueprints. “There's a storage area on the lower level, beneath the atrium, same level the machines are on. It's filled with weapons and ammunition. We're going to take some people down there and see what we can find.”
Adair nodded and then noticed the still-sickened expression on Vince's face. His face softened. “Come on,” he said. “Let's get out of this place.”
λ
The basement was dim, the hallway at the base of the stairs lit only by buzzing, blinking lights. Vince could see the shapes of many large machines in the rooms beyond, packed tightly together, and the walls were lined with strange black pods all the way up to the ceiling. Adair told him that was where the Stalkers slept. They didn't go that way; instead they headed towards the front of the building. The walls of the corridors here bore more traces of the factory's past; it was covered thick with posters, the oldest ones on the bottom advertising exhibits and lectures. Over these had been pasted much newer ones, all bearing a strange symbol that Vince had seen but not really thought much on throughout the city; like a half moon or the socket of a wrench clenched around an orb. Several of the posters seemed to be directed at soldiers. “Remember,” one stated, “memory replacement is the first step towards rank privileges.”
They came to two massive steel doors, locked. Adair pulled the lid off of a keypad on the wall next to them, exposing a mass of wires beneath, then took from his bag a black plastic case containing some tiny tools. For a few minutes he fiddled with the wires, and then there was a sudden burst, and the doors slid open.
Nearly everyone let out a slight gasp, and Jack made a low whistle. The place was stacked high with crates and boxes. Adair walked over to the nearest pile and slid a crate out and pried it open. When he saw what was inside he laughed, and removed from it an orange rocket about the size of his forearm. “There's all the makings of an RPG launcher in here,” he said. “That might come in handy.”
Jack organized the Resistance members into groups and they began to search through the contents of the boxes. Vince slipped away. It was even more dark and depressing in there, and he felt exhausted. He couldn't stop thinking about those Stalker-things. He'd seen some pretty fucked up shit before, and quite a bit more in the last few hours, but something about them horrified him in a way he couldn't entirely fathom.
He stepped back into the corridor and shone his torch on the posters covering the walls again. The one closest to him was black with gold lettering - “CMB” - and there was a white dove flying across it. He peeled away one corner of it and pulled it mostly off. Beneath it, there was a floor map of the museum.
The Crimes Against Humanity exhibit is not recommended for children under the age of 16.
“Ain't this what Howard would call 'irony'?” he wondered aloud. For a second he could almost feel Howard's presence next to him. He was terribly lonely.
Next to the poster, there was a door. They'd passed several of them on the way here. Curious, he pressed on its handle and it gave beneath his hand, creaking. He turned the torch's light into the room; it looked like an old, disused office. Bit boring. He was about to close the door again, when he heard a slight noise, a squeaking shuffle. He flashed the light around the room again, but still didn't see anything.
Then he heard it again, and realized it wasn't coming from the office at all. It was behind him, in the hallway.
He spun around and dropped the torch in shock. There was a Stalker in the hallway.
“Oh, f-f-fuck,” he gasped, backing away.
The Stalker was hobbling, painfully slow, towards him, its horrible little stump arms swaying slightly with each movement, looking down towards the ground. Vince was frozen in terror, but as this truly sad and pathetic figured before him continued down the hall, he started to relax. After all, what could this thing possibly do to him? There was no way it could hurt him. It looked utterly helpless.
Vince cautiously took a step closer. He wondered if it could talk. “Hello?” he whispered.
The Stalker stopped, its face still pointed downwards. Vince watched it with curiosity. It must have heard him, mustn't it? Maybe it really couldn't speak.
Suddenly, the Stalker let out a high-pitched, wordless shriek. Vince shouted in fright, lost his balance, and fell backwards, hitting the floor hard. This turned out to be a bit of luck, as at that moment the Stalker's head snapped upwards and a red beam of light, like a laser sight, shot out from the metal plate covering its face, and melted a hole in the wall behind where Vince had been standing.
Vince scrambled to his feet and took off in a dash back towards the storage room doors. The others, hearing the Stalker's scream, had just reached the entrance themselves as Vince rushed to it.
“What the --”
“I thought they were all dead!”
Adair grabbed Vince by the arm and pulled him into the room. Vince turned his head and saw the Stalker rounding the corner towards them.
Jack pushed his way to the front. He was loading a round, ribbed metal slug into a ridiculously futuristic-looking gun. He raised the gun and fired it, and a glowing orb of light sped from the muzzle of the gun, bouncing against the walls of the corridor until it hit its target. The Stalker's body glowed, and then it seemed to actually float for a moment, before it disintegrated into nothing.
“Shit,” Vince said, feeling very wobbly.
“Are you all right?” Adair asked.
“Slattery, Morris, I thought you two had taken care of them all,” Jack said to the Irishman and his companion.
“Jesus Christ, we thought so too. That one must not have come and gotten hooked up with the others.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a minute,” Adair said to Vince. He looked like he might need to as well.
“Calm down, it's dead,” the man called Morris said.
“You don't understand,” Adair muttered. “You didn't work alongside those things for years and see your friends disappear and come back like that and know that you were probably next.”
“Maybe we should get out of here,” Jack said. He laid a shaking hand on Adair's back. “There could be more wandering around loose.”
“Yeah, let's get out of here,” Vince said weakly.
In teams, they carried up crates of weapons and ammo to the atrium and distributed it among the people still waiting outside.
“What’s next?” Vince asked, once they were mercifully out of the place and in the open air.
Jack looked thoughtful. He pointed north. “See that radio tower?” Vince nodded. “That's where we think their communication hub is. If we can secure it, we'll be able to restore radio contact with the base, and see what happened there.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around at the Resistance members gathered in front of the factory. “I think … I think we should split up for now.”
“Split up?” Slattery asked. “Is that really wise?”
“Right now, I think we’ll have a better chance if we’re in smaller, more mobile groups.” He pulled a folded map from his pack and opened it up. “Look,” he said, “Slattery, Morris, I think you two should take a group to the hospital here near the river.” He pointed to St. Thomas’ on the map. “We can get medical supplies there. I wouldn’t doubt there’s a bunch of Combine holed up there, as well. Does that sound good to you?” Slattery looked thoughtful, and nodded.
Christy, Vince thought. Howard would love this. Howard had gone through a brief phase when they were still in school when he’d been obsessed with RISK and reading biographies of war heroes. That was before he’d decided he wasn't quite cut out for that type of revolution, and stuck to fighting the system with words and music rather than bullets. And he calls me flighty.
Jack gestured for Roxanne and Tessler to come over to him. “I want you two to take charge of the factory.”
“How will we communicate if there’s an emergency, until you get the radios working again?”
“Flare guns!” Adair said suddenly, and started looking through some of the crates of weaponry. “I swear I saw some … here they are!”
“Right,” Jack said, handing them out. Vince was surprised to have one pressed upon him. “Don’t use them unless you really need help, right?” They all nodded. Vince put the flare gun away inside his bag.
Besides, Jack, Adair, and himself, about five others joined the radio tower group. Vince waved goodbye to Roxanne and Tessler as they left them behind, wondering if he'd ever see them again. Adair, an RPG slung over his shoulder, slung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him along. “Stick with me,” he said to Vince. “I'm going to show you how to use that gun on the way there, all right?”
λ
“Okay - see the television sitting near that open window there on the second floor? Try aiming for that.”
Vince raised his pistol, lined up the sight, and pulled the trigger. The screen was hit dead center and the television fell over with a fizzle and a crash. Funny - just before it had hit he swore the screen had flashed on … and he'd seen a man's face …
“Pretty good,” Adair said. “Looks like you're a natural.”
“Told you I'd played Duck Hunt.”
“Hey!” someone shouted from the front of their group. “Zombies up ahead!”
They looked up, and Vince saw a slow-moving group of blood-stained figures shuffling towards them from up the street.
“Try shooting them,” Adair said. Vince raised his gun.
Before he could fire though, a burst of green lightning arced through the air. It hit the zombies all at once and they fell, spasming, to the ground.
Adair gasped. “Was that --?”
Jack finished for him: “It has to be a Vortigaunt!”
From the alleyway that the light had come from, two figures appeared. One was a tall, fairly unremarkable-looking man, wearing ragged clothing. The other, however, was something truly bizarre - a great, stooped leathery creature. It had thin, wiry muscles and hoofed feet, and appeared to possess only one eye - massive and glowing red, taking up most of its face.
“Don't worry,” Adair told him, “Vorts are friendly. They're on our side. But ...”
“Didn't think there were any left around here,” Jack finished for him.
The Vortigaunt and his companion approached them. There was something faintly familiar to Vince about the human - he was a gainly dark-skinned man with a thick moustache and bright white teeth.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, and Vince heard his voice continue in his head - I go by many names … and he groaned a little. Really? He waited with baited breath.
But, “I am known as Clarence,” the man said simply. Some things, Vince thought, were better off being different here. Or at least, they were less time-consuming.
Next the Vortigaunt spoke, in oddly accented but otherwise perfect English, which for some reason surprised Vince. “We heard of the Uprising and thought we might assist.” His - he sounded male, anyway - voice was gravelly and there was a strange, sing-song rhythm to it; he stressed syllables unusually, and his sibilants were long and drawn out. Vince thought it sounded wonderfully weird and beautiful.
“We heard the Vortigaunts in this area had been rounded up and sent to Nova Prospekt,” Adair said. “Did you escape from the Vortigaunt camp when it was raided?”
“We both did,” Clarence said. “We've been hiding out not far from the city since then. When we saw the portal storms, we decided to investigate, and soon we started hearing warnings from the Overwatch Voice ….”
“We know your numbers are few,” the Vortigaunt broke in, blinking his great, fiery eye, “but your will is strong. We will help you in whatever small ways we can.”
Vince was fairly impressed. He has a sort of Yoda vibe about him, he thought. I like it.
“Well then, we're glad to have your help,” Jack said.
Clarence entered into a discussion with Jack and Adair, and Vince slipped around them so that he was walking next to the Vortigaunt. “Hello there,” he said with cheerful curiosity. “I'm Vince.”
The Vortigaunt turned his head towards him. There were two tiny but sharp teeth protruding from his mouth, giving him an almost babyish air. “I am pleased to make the acquaintance of the Vince,” it said.
Vince laughed. “What're you called?”
“We Vortigaunts do not use individual appellations amongst ourselves. We are coterminous.”
“Oh … sorry to hear that,” Vince said. He wasn't certain what 'coterminous' meant exactly, but it sounded painful.
The Vortigaunt gave a breathy grunt that Vince thought might have been a chuckle. “However, sometimes humans like to give us names. It does not matter to us either way. The Clarence has never bothered to give me one, but if you wish to, you may.”
Vince beamed, delighted. “Really? Hm. Let's see.” He bit his lip, his face screwed up in concentration. “Ahh … why don't I call you … I know!” He grinned at the Vortigaunt. “Mortimer! Mort the Vort.”
The Vortigaunt bowed his head. “The Vince honors me with such a name.”
“So Mort - you're from another world, right?”
“It is true that I was not born on this rock. My place of origins is very distant.”
“So … you've never heard Gary Numan, then?”
λ
They were nearing the radio tower. Vince had filled Mort in on the highlights of Gary's musical catalog, and in turn Mort had sung a Vortigaunt song for him, with a low voice and in his native language, which was in turns both harsh and melodic.
“That was well genius, Mort.”
“I thank the Vince for being such a receptive audience. It was written by our most evocative poet. If only he could see us now, but alas, he fell back into the Vortessance long before we escaped our damnable captivity.”
“Captivity?”
“Yes. Vortigaunt-kind spent many - centuries, by your understanding of time - in enslavement. It was only until recently that we slipped our yoke, thanks to the efforts of the Freeman.”
“The free man? Who's that?”
Mort blinked his eye. “One who was brought here … by the same entity you were, perhaps.”
Vince shook his head in confusion. “I don't know what you're on about. I wasn’t brought here by anyone.”
“You came through a portal storm, you said?”
“Sure. At least, that's what they told me, anyway.” He nodded towards Adair and Jack.
“It seems to me that you have been brought here for a purpose.”
“What, like fate or somethin'?”
Mort seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Some might call it fate. But fate has henchman, does it not?” He made that funny laugh again, and then gestured with one claw. “It appears we have arrived at our destination.”
Vince looked up and saw that they had, indeed, reached the radio tower. Its control base was surrounded on three sides by other buildings and a small courtyard; but more importantly, all points of access were cordoned off by walls of blue, staticky light, emerging from receivers connected the walls of the neighboring houses.
“I thought Pen Pen took down all the force fields,” Jack said.
“They've got to be running it off of an alternative power source, something off the grid,” Adair answered. “Let's take a look around.”
They followed the perimeter of the closest bordering building. All of its entrances were sealed shut with some sort of black clamp covering the doorknobs. The windows were boarded up from the inside. However, when they slipped into a grassy alleyway on the farthest side of the building, Adair crouched down and called out to the others.
“There's a basement window here that isn't boarded up. I think I might be able to get in through here.”
“That's a pretty small window,” Jack said.
“I can fit through. You'll have to stay behind, though.”
Jack frowned.
“Sorry! It's not my fault you're a big, hulking Northerner.”
“Someone has to go with you,” Jack said, and looked at the others who had come with them, but they all shrugged sheepishly. None of them looked like they’d fit through the window, either.
“This is very dangerous,” Clarence spoke up. “There might be soldiers in there. Or at the very least, there might be an infestation. You must take care.”
“Take him with you,” Jack said, nodding towards Vince. “He'll fit, too.”
“Huh?” Vince said, surprised. “Me?”
“Jack, this is kind of a stealth operation … no offense, Vince, but you're not very stealthy.”
Vince had no argument for this. Stealth was, indeed, not his thing in the least.
“I'm not sending you in there alone. You need some kind of back up, and Vince isn't a bad shot, at least.”
Abruptly, Mort broke in: “The Vince is capable. Take him with you.”
Adair pursed his lips and then sighed in defeat. “Fine.” He looked at Vince. “You okay with this?”
Vince was a little taken aback. “Capable” wasn't a word used to describe Vince Noir very often. But … “Okay. Let's do it.” I've done crazier things than this before, anyway.
Adair nodded and smashed the window in with the butt of his shotgun, then kicked out any remaining shards. Then he handed the RPG to Jack. “Too bulky for this,” he said. He slid his shotgun strap over his shoulder and then pulled his pistol out of his jacket and took the safety off. He got down on his hands and knees and peered through the window. “Looks clear in there,” he said confidently. “I'm going in.”
“Be careful,” Jack said, and then grinned mischievously and swatted Adair's upturned bottom.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing, Brown? Keep your hands to yourself!” Adair shouted, but as he lowered his legs through the windows he was smirking. He let himself drop to the floor. “Come on, Vince.”
Vince followed suit, shooting a wary glance up at Jack. “Don't even think about it,” he warned. Jack held up his hands innocently. Vince slid through the window and dropped, stumbling a bit as he landed. Mort stuck his head through the window.
“Keep a watchful eye. This place has a stench of death to it.”
Vince frowned. “You waited until I was already inside to come out with that?”
Adair groaned. “Get your gun out and stop whinging.”
λ
They quickly found their way up to the first floor from the basement. There had been a board nailed across the cellar door, but luckily it had been nailed on the inside. A voice much like Howard's spoke up in Vince's head: Don't be so thankful. Maybe there's something upstairs they were trying to keep out.
Upstairs it was nearly as dim as it had been in the basement, with just little shafts of grey light filtering in through the boarded up windows. And Mort had been right; there was a funny smell to this place. Like rotting food. Well nasty.
“This way,” Adair said, nodding his head down the hallway. No wonder it smelled in here; the place was filthy, old trash and bits of debris covering the floor like a carpet. It had once been a block of flats; some of the doors were open, and they could see overturned tables and chairs inside. There was a thick-coating of dust on everything. The floorboards creaked unsteadily beneath their feet. Vince didn’t think anyone had lived here in a long time.
They reached the end of the corridor and Adair peered around the corner. “All right,” he said, smiling a little. “Look there - that's our way in.” Down the end of this hallway there was a door, half off of its hinges, like something had broken it open. On the other side they could just make out the radio control room.
“Come on,” Adair said, “let's get this over wi --”
They had only just started down the hallway when overhead there was an ominous creaking noise. Adair and Vince froze, and Adair raised his gun.
“You think somebody's up there?” Vince whispered, and then the ceiling fell in on them. Adair shouted and pushed him back, then started firing his pistol. It took Vince a moment to realize why; a pile of headcrabs had fallen from the floor above, like a disgusting piñata. From above he heard a groan, looked up, and gasped. There was a zombie lying near the hole in the ceiling above them, its arms dangling down. He raised his own gun and shot it, and it fell through the hole onto the floor in front of him, dead.
“Vince, come on,” Adair said. He'd disposed of all of the headcrabs, but upstairs they could hear further movement. “Let's get out of here before more show up.” Vince nodded and they sprinted down the hall towards the exit, and Adair kicked the door the rest of the way off its hinges and stepped out into the street, Vince following close behind him.
The lane was empty and the radio control tower was quiet. On the other side from where they were standing was the forcefield, beyond which Jack and the others were waiting, out of their sight.
“I don't see anybody,” Adair murmured. “It looks deserted.” He frowned, clearly uneasy.
“What's wrong?” Vince asked.
“Seems too easy, don't it?” Adair replied. His gun raised he edged carefully to the side, peering around the control room. He stopped and pointed at something. Vince walked over and saw that it was an APC, parked near the tower, and bizarrely there were cables attached to its engine, which disappeared around the back of the building. “That's probably the power source that the field's running off of. If we can unhook it, they should go down. Let's check it out.”
They started to make their way over to the APC. Vince tried to imitate Adair's stance, torn between feeling ridiculous and terrified out of his wits. If there hadn't just been a close encounter between his brains and the gaping maw of an alien lifeform, he'd probably be laughing, and even so there was a slight hysterical giggle building somewhere in the back of his throat.
Adair stopped. “Did you hear that?” He whispered. Vince listened and shook his head. He didn't hear a thing.
Adair's brow creased in consternation. “Something don't feel right.” He peered at the control room's door. “This could be a trap --”
The door suddenly burst open. Adair jumped and trained his gun on it. Vince backed away, expecting to see, just as Adair had predicted, a soldier standing in entrance. But it wasn't that … exactly.
Adair cried out, startled. “Shit! Vince! Shoot at it!”
What had exited the door of the control room wasn't a soldier, at least not anymore. It was a zombie who had once been a soldier. Suddenly the broken down door of the building they'd just exited was making a lot more sense. The thing moved fast - much faster than the other zombies Vince had seen, with a sort of awkward rolling gait, and it was running towards them. The sound Adair had heard, now much clearer, was the distorted crackling of the soldier's radio speaker, transmitting hisses of static and mechanized grunting.
Adair ran backwards, shooting at the zombie. Vince shot too, but in his panic he didn't seem to be quite as good as he'd been before.
“Vince! Get away, it's got a grenade!”
Sure enough, the zombie soldier had somehow coordinated its limbs enough to pull a grenade from inside its protective suit. Vince turned and fled, back towards the building they had just left. But where the hell was he going to go? Not back inside, it was just as bad in there as out here. He spotted a fire escape attached to the wall not far from the door; the lower rotted metal stairs had mostly broken off. Quickly, he jumped and just managed to pull himself up onto it, and just in time. The grenade, still clasped in the zombie's hand - apparently its thought process wasn't quite advanced enough to throw the thing - exploded, taking the zombie with it, thankfully. Above, the rusty fire escape Vince was clinging to creaked and, and then, after an agonizing second, collapsed with a crash.
Bonus Scene: Howard and Vince don’t go to Ravenholm
Howard: Tell me again why we’re going this way?
Vince: What? You said yourself - this is the most direct and easy path to our destination.
Howard: Yeah, but that was before all the people at Black Mesa East told us “we don’t go to Ravenholm anymore” with that creepy, haunted look in their eyes, wasn’t it?
Vince: Yeah, what was all that about?
Howard: Also, there was the fact that entrance to Ravenholm was all boarded and closed up. Looked a bit foreboding.
Vince: It was a bit of a struggle to get in, yeah.
Howard: And then there were those corpses at the city limits and that graffiti that said Turn back if you value your lives ...
Vince: I’m sure it’s nothing, though, Howard. Buck up.
Howard: I assure you, sir, I’m perfectly bucked up. Howard Moon can take care of himself. It’s you I’m worried about.
Vince: Me? Who’s the one who took out that weird crocodile monster that spat acid when we were hiding out in the sewers? While you cowered in the corner pissing yourself? Ruined my favorite shirt and all.
Howard: Shhh! What’s that noise?
Loudspeaker: Greetings, my children. I am Father Grigori. Welcome to Ravenholm. I think you’ll find it’s not … quite what it once was! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Howard: He sounds nice.
Vince: A bit mad maybe.
Loudspeaker: If you can make your way to the church, I’ll be waiting to help you escape to the other side of town. Make free use of my traps on your journey … I’m sure they’ll be … most useful! Ha ha ha!
Vince: Traps? For what exactly?
Howard: Oh dear. Oh … oh my.
Vince: What’s wrong? … Oh. That’s …
Howard: … quite a lot of zombies, isn’t it?
Loudspeaker: Fear not, my children. “He that endureth to the end shall be saved!”
Vince: On second thought, let’s take the long way round, Howard.
Howard: I am in complete agreement. Leg it!
Loudspeaker: Wait! “Whither goest though?” Come back!
Notes
The All-Knowing Vortigaunt's Poem
This is a long poem that a couple of Vortigaunts in the game will recite to you if you bug them enough. You can hear the whole thing here.
Different Types of Zombies
There are four types of zombies in HL2. There’s your standard zombie, slow, stumbling, etc; fast zombies, which are … fast … and scream a lot, and are skeletal; poison zombies, which are stooped over, really slow but strong, and carry extra headcrabs which can poison you; and “Zombines”, which are any Combine soldiers that get headcrabbed. They’re a little smarter than the other zombies are, probably because Combine soldiers are modified with computer enhancements.
The Munitions Factory/Imperial War Museum-London
I know, it's a little cheesy, but the site of the factory is in fact meant to be the London branch of the Imperial War Museum A little bit about the factory ideas … in one of the early versions of HL2’s storyline, there was supposed to be a stretch of gameplay in which the player toured the factory district of City 17, and there were child laborers and that sort of thing. Later on, this was scrapped for several reasons, in part because it was decided that the Combine would hinder human reproduction and so by the time HL2 takes place there are no more children. They have all grown up and people can’t reproduce because of a suppressing field which inhibits fetal growth in human beings.
Stalkers
Stalkers are rarely seen but are probably the creepiest “foes”, if you can call them that, in the game. The Combine regularly ships people off to Nova Prospekt and transforms them into these pitiful mindless beasts of labor. Basically, the plan is to turn all human beings either into transhuman soldiers or slaves … this is what the Combine does to every world it conquers. Most of the aliens fighting on the Combine's side are conquered species which have been similarly modified -- Hunters, Striders, Gunships, Dropships.
Slattery & Morris, Roxanne & Tessler, Clarence
Yes, these are meant to be Michael Smiley’s and Nick Frost’s characters from the Mint Royale video, heh. XD And come to think of it, I suppose Roxanne and Tessler are sort of alterna-Anthrax & Ebola/Neon & Ultra. I didn't really intend for it to be that way but it kind of works! And Clarence, of course, is Rudi.
Vortigaunts
Ah, I’ve been waiting so long to introduce Vortigaunts! One of my favorite things about HL2! They’re so cute. In HL1 Vorts are your enemies, but that’s because they’re enslaved by a creature called the Nihilanth, who is in turn enslaved by the Combine. Gordon inadvertently frees the Vorts at the end of HL1 by killing the Nihilanth, and so they have partnered with humans to join in taking down the Combine. They’re incredibly wise and they seem to be able to access a shared consciousness (the Vortessance).
Ravenholm
The bonus scene references a chapter in HL2 called “We Don’t Go to Ravenholm”, in which Gordon fights his way through a former Resistance town that was severely bombed with headcrab shells. The only survivor of Ravenholm is Father Grigori, a mad Russian priest, who has littered the town with complicated traps and has a tendency to quote the Bible a lot. I adore Grigori, but we won’t be seeing him in the actual story, so I wanted to put him in here somehow.