H λ L F - L I F E: Bishop's War✔️

CHλPTER 05: Waste Disposal

The elevator was worse than he thought.

All the way down his long crawl deeper still into the earth, Eric kept glancing down at it and thinking about what might be inside that metal cube. When he finally hit bottom and stepped onto the dented surface of the elevator, he saw that the emergency roof panel was open. Even before he got down closer, he could smell the blood. Swallowing, he crouched down and peered in through the square opening.

The light from the elevator shaft was poor, but there was enough to tell that it was bad. He spied a heap of bodies among the floor, and could tell that at least one of them was wearing a security guard's uniform. For a moment, Eric crouched there and debated with himself. Could he really afford to give into revulsion and ignore this potential treasure trove? He looked behind him, at the doors, which were open just a little. The way yet gone. Whatever lay beyond. He thought about the roughly one and a half magazines he had left for his pistol, the pipe wrench, the complete lack of any other kind of arsenal. No, he surmised, he couldn't.

He had to do this.

With a heavy sigh that he immediately regretted, because breathing in the scent of blood was just awful, he pulled out his flashlight and flicked it on. At least he'd have light-

The flashlight flickered and died.

"Oh come on!" he moaned, and tried to reactive it.

Instead of succeeding, he wasted a few long minutes cursing at it, banging it into his palm, then against his leg, then pulling out the batteries and switching them around. When that didn't work, he beat it a few times in frustration against the top of the lift until the glass cracked. Still no power. In a fit of rage, he hurled it into the wall. The glass and the bulb burst and it all fell in between the lift and the wall. Eric sat there for another moment.

With another heavy sigh, he lowered himself into the hole. The smell immediately grew ten times worse, and it seemed horribly hot inside of the cube of death. What he wouldn't give for a working flashlight! Eric began working as quickly as he could, going by touch alone for the most part, breathing shallowly and focusing hard on not freaking the hell out. He found his mind fumbling with what must have happened, caught awkwardly in between not wanting to think about it and wondering if maybe it might keep him distracted long enough to get this over with.

There were, he thought, about three people inside. More than likely all from security. God, he might know one or all of them. He couldn't see faces though, and didn't want to. It was slow, grueling work, but in the end, all he got for his efforts was a single magazine and another pistol. Once he found the pistol, he shoved it into his pocket and then hopped back up and out of the elevator. He might have spent little more than two minutes in that bloody dim hell, but it felt like a lot longer. Free of it, Eric kept moving, getting over to the partially-open doors and forcing them open the rest of the way. He tripped coming out and cried out as he slammed painfully to a dusty concrete floor. For several seconds, he simply laid there.

What a goddamned day this was turning out to be.

He picked himself up off the floor and took a look at the pistol. Something had felt a little off about it when he'd grabbed it, but he'd been too eager to get out of there. As he studied it, he immediately found a problem.

The barrel was messed up.

"Aw dammit!" he snapped, almost throwing it across the room.

Surprised at his second outburst of anger, Eric took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and forced himself to relax. Instead, he ejected the magazine and checked it over. Only one round was missing. He slipped it into his pocket. Well...two magazines wasn't a terrible trade for two minutes in that lift. He tossed the gun aside and pulled out his own sidearm. He had no idea how far the situation had spread, but he had to assume that all of Black Mesa was a battlefield now. Eric looked around the room he had come into.