Half Life: Pandemic

Chapter 2: Rampage

9-24 HOURS AFTER OUTBREAK

Sector 13 had been completely destroyed and shut down by the Combine after the first outbreak of the plague. Most of the surviving civilians from City 13 have been evacuated to various safe zones, while some were not able to make it when a few infected were able to board some of the trains. The Combine have been informed of the pathogen's existence but are still not exactly sure what it could be or where it came from.

A few hours after Sector 13's destruction, one of the trains had stopped on Sector 12. However, nobody was aware that the train contained infected civilians when one of the infected managed to board it. When the train's doors opened in the trainstation, the infected broke loose once again into City 12. Civil Protection Units rushed to the trainstation to prevent the infected from reaching past the area. The infected civilians from City 13 began attacking and infecting the other civilians in City 12, allowing the plague to spread again.

The infected have greatly outnumbered the Civil Protection trying to stop them, allowing them to quickly overrun their defenses. This allowed the infected to reach the plaza, and soon into the streets of the city. Overwatch units were immediately sent into the streets to stop the infected that have broken loose into Sector 12.

Soon, when all the civilians and the infected are scattered across the entire city, nobody could easily see who are infected and who are not. This made it far too difficult for even the Overwatch units to target each and every infected and avoid shooting the civilians. Because of this, the Overwatch was sent orders to kill everything, both the infected and the civilians.

In the middle of the events in Sector 12, some of the infected had already managed to enter and began to overrun Sector 15 through the city's canal system. With both events happening at the same time, the Combine is now put on full alert. In Sector 17, the Citadel's sirens began wailing, signalling that the entire Citadel is alerted about the plague's outbreaks.

Eventually, the Combine completely lost control of both Sector 12 and Sector 15 and began sector sweeps on both sectors, disregarding the evacuation process for the surviving civilians. Before the sector sweep units could have been sent to both sectors, the infected in both areas have already managed to overrun the defense fields connected to the walls of the cities, allowing some of the infected from both areas to break out of the city.

While some infected managed to escape before the sector sweeps began, a few civilians in both sectors managed to escape through different entrance and exit points. When the Overwatch arrived with the sector sweep units, they began to exterminate all the infected that are still trying to escape. However, in resort to stopping the infected that escaped, the Overwatch sent more units outside both sectors to prevent them from reaching the other Combine cities.

During the middle of the sector sweeps in Sector 12 and Sector 15, the surviving civilians outside the city had managed to escape into safer grounds by passing through the canal systems and through the dangerous underground tunnels. Both the sector sweeps on Sector 12 and Sector 15 have succesfully exterminated all the infected in the city, but the Overwatch were failing to stop the infected outside the city.

The infected began to split up and scatter around the areas outside the Combine cities while the Overwatch attempt to keep track and stop them. In this process, attack helicopters, scanners and multiple soldiers began scouting different locations. All Combine cities became aware of the existence of the infected and began to set up more defense fields to prevent the infected from easily breaking in.

A small number of infected managed to reach the coastlines after they had scattered outside the Combine sectors, but were easily killed by the Combine that are maintaining the area. However, this did not stop the plague from spreading. As time passed, the pathogenic cells began reproducing and multiplying in the corpses of the infected. This caused the blood and cells of the dead body to glow in a green color, which then caught the attention of Xenian wildlife that had been wandering around.

Upon the aliens making contact through touching and even consuming the corpses, this caused them to carry the pathogenic cells with them and allowed it to be transported even further into the wild. While the pathogen slowly spreads unnoticed in the coastlines, the infected scattered outside the Combine cities began to hunt down lost civilians and scavenge dead bodies to feed on them. The infected were also able to move away from the Combine's defense fields and hide in multiple unoccupied locations.

Many days later, an eerie silence grew upon the areas outside the Combine cities. The Combine began noticing that the areas outside of the cities had mysteriously been deserted by both the infected and Xenian wildlife. Because of the recent appearances of the infected and the pathogen, Xenian wildlife migrated away from Combine civilization and back into the wild. The Combine did not aquire complete evidence of the pathogen and the infected completely vanishing, allowing the Citadel to no longer be set on full alert temporarily.

However, the infected and the pathogen had not yet completely disappeared. While only very few infected had been killed by the Combine, the rest of the surviving ones took shelter from the Combine in different deserted locations located in the undergrounds. While the infected took shelter, the pathogen cells were still being slowly carried far throughout the wild by Xenian wildlife.