PART TWO
                                                                –The Long Road–

They drove across the island, beneath a cold winter sun, and came at last to their only means of escape.

Greg drove down the main road of the only town on Polaris Island, Milton, and felt once again what it was like to pass through a ghost town. A place of immense isolation and death. There were some signs of attack: broken windows, bullet holes, dead bodies in the street. Some of them were Combat Forms.

The Flood had definitely come to the island.

"Damn," Izzy whispered. "They got hit hard."

"Yep," Greg muttered. He sat in the driver's seat, listening to the wind and the vehicle idle.

"Should we search the houses?" Izzy asked uncertainly, looking around.

"No, I don't think so. We already know that we're the only people in the area, and I have serious doubts there's any kind of big stash hidden here. But...I do think we should try to make sure that our back is covered."

"How's that?" she asked.

"Get ready, I'll show you," he replied.

She nodded and stood up in her seat, pulling her pistol out. Greg leaned on the horn. It was loud and even though he knew it was coming, because he was the one doing it, it still startled him. He was pretty wound up right now. The horn blared on, echoing across the dead, frozen landscape, washing over the vacant structures. After about half a minute, he stopped and then slowly stood in his seat, joining Izzy in her vigil.

"I don't like this," she muttered.

"It is pretty dangerous," he replied. She sighed. "I'm sorry, but this is the best option. Way better for them to come to us."

"Yeah, well-"

Something growled off to the right. They both fell silent and took aim. The growling grew louder as the entity producing it drew closer. It was coming from the right side. Greg held his pistol firmly, aiming towards the general area the sound was coming from. He began to hear footsteps, crunching in the snow, and he shifted his aim to between a pair of houses. A shadow appeared, swaying from side to side as the creature came closer.

And then a Flood Combat Form stepped out into the cold light of day.

It was hideous, he saw as he took aim, but more than just hideous. It was monstrous. It was a perversion of humanity, because it had obviously once been human. Its greenish, mottled skin was grotesque to behold. Its lopsided, asymmetrical nature touched him on a deep, primal level, evoking disgust and fear, as one of its arms had been replaced with a bundle of writhing tentacles and two enormous claws. Its shoulder was easily four or five times normal size on that side and it hobbled as it advanced on them.

By far its most disturbing aspect was the fact that a human head hung off to the right side, like a forgotten thing, like a tumor, pushed aside to make way for its new alien face, which was a trio of bristly stalks that ended in puffs of what resembled plant roots. They stuck out of where the neck once met the chest, which was now just a solid lump of flesh and meat. The thing stared at them, inasmuch as it could, and made a gurgling, growling sound.

Both Greg and Izzy fired at the same time. He aimed directly for the chest area, where the stalks stuck out of, and the twin rounds punched into the corroded flesh, killing it instantly. The creature went rigid and then fell onto its back with a heavy thud, becoming still as a statue in the recently fallen snow. A cold wind blew.

"They're so much worse in the daylight," Izzy groaned.

"Yes, they are," Greg muttered.

More growling came to them, more footsteps in the snow, more creatures coming to feed or murder or infect, or whatever it was they did. He saw two of them appear behind the Warthog, coming from around a house, and three more stalked onto the street to his left. Greg shifted aim and got to work, and heard Izzy do the same thing. He emptied his pistol blowing out their chests in sprays of pulpy, decayed gore.

He dropped one, two, three of the hideous things. Their old blood stained the snow and some of the houses as they went down. The M6G seemed very well-suited for the task of putting down Combat Forms, Greg was exceptionally happy to learn. He emptied the pistol and hastily reloaded, but as he finished slapping the magazine home, he looked around, scanning the area, and saw no more movement.

Izzy stopped firing as well.

"Is that it?" she growled, breathing heavily.

"I...think so," Greg murmured. They waited another thirty seconds, breaths foaming on the air as they studied the buildings around them. No more growls, no more footsteps. Slowly, Greg lowered his pistol, then put it back into its holster. "They don't seem smart enough to hide."

"I sure hope so," Izzy replied. She holstered her pistol. "So, onward?"

"Yeah," he said, and they sat back down. Greg began driving slowly towards the tunnel at the end of the road. Although he had gotten a little bit of a confidence boost from actually putting the monsters down, having faced them and survived again, he couldn't help but feel that the thick darkness of the tunnel ahead, and the arrival of the Combat Forms themselves, were both bad omens. Portents of doom. He didn't really consider himself a spiritual man, but sometimes it did feel like the universe was trying to tell him something.

And right now it was telling him that the way ahead was dangerous.

As they reached the edge of the tunnel, which sloped downward immediately, Greg hesitated, letting the Warthog roll to a stop. It sat there, idling. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Finally, Greg flipped on the headlights.

Brilliant beams of white light cut into the darkness, though it did not banish it.

He could only just see the edges of the tunnel. They were scarred and weather-eaten instacrete. Up ahead, something growled, the sound echoing out to them.

"Well, here we go," he said.

"Here we go," Izzy replied quietly. She sounded vaguely ill, and he knew exactly how she felt.

Well, the only way out was through.

Greg took his foot off the brake and slowly began to drive them into the darkness.

* * *

They managed to get about thirty feet, down the incline, before having to stop.

Although Greg had been envisioning a snarl of abandoned vehicles choking the tunnel, it wasn't quite that bad. But there were a few abandoned vehicles in the middle of the road, blocking the way. The tunnel was a good fifty feet wide, with two narrow lanes and strips of sidewalk along either side. There was supposed to be lighting, he could see, but all the bulbs and lamps attached to the walls at regular intervals were dark and dead.

He saw uncertain shapes loping slowly around in the shadows his headlights cast.

"So...we're suppose to actually secure this tunnel, huh?" Izzy asked softly.

"Yeah," Greg replied. "That's our goal."

She sighed heavily. "I guess we should probably get started."

"Yeah. Okay, we'll need to kill all the hostiles in the area, and get these cars moved out of the way. And we should search for supplies, ammo, anything we can find. And..." he hesitated, looking over to the right, "...and there's a door over there. Which means there's almost certainly going to be more doors. Well, that could be a good thing, I guess. Let's go."

He turned off the Warthog, but left the headlights on. Whatever other Flood were around seemed to be at a safe enough distance for the moment. The door in question was a simple but sturdy industrial door built into the instacrete wall to their right. It was partially open. Greg grabbed his shotgun from the Warthog and slung it over his shoulder, then flicked on the flashlight mounted on the end of the barrel.

"Watch my back," he whispered.

"Affirmative," Izzy replied.

He carefully pushed the door open, keeping the shotgun raised, and when nothing leaped out at him, he stepped slowly inside and played the flashlight beam across the interior. It was a break area, no doubt for maintenance personnel. There was just a single door at the back of the room. He looked across the area, spying a pair of couches, a scratched, low table, a row of cabinets and counters with a mini-fridge and a microwave, all of it cleared out. Greg performed a quick sweep of the room and the room through the door at the back, which turned out to be a simple bathroom, and managed to find at least one useful thing.

"Izzy," he said, and she appeared in the doorway. "Here. Look."

She joined him, closing the door quietly behind her, and they studied a map pinned to the wall of the tunnel. It was simple enough, highlighting another six rooms spread down the length of the passageway to either side. There were a pair of maintenance work areas, a pair of storage rooms, a public bathroom, and finally...

"Knew it," Izzy muttered as she tapped a generator room on the map. "This place has its own generator. It was buried, so we might be able to fix it, get some lights on."

"A working generator would sure as hell help a military convoy," Greg murmured.

"You get me there and I'll see what I can do," Izzy replied.

The generator room was on the opposite side and about halfway down the length of the tunnel...so almost a mile away. Damn, this was a long tunnel. One of the maintenance areas and a storage room were on the way, so he made a mental note to check that out. As they returned to the main area, Greg decided it was time for a repeat performance of the battle above ground. Only this time it was going to be a lot scarier.

He and Izzy climbed up onto a nearby pair of vehicles, standing an appreciable distance apart, and looked into the shadowy gloom ahead of them. Shapes still lurked, hobbling things that growled to themselves, or perhaps each other, in the murky darkness ahead. Greg saw one wander into the headlight's beam and become illuminated in all its horrible glory. He aimed and fired, putting a shot right through its chest.

He might as well have been ringing the dinner bell or firing off a shot at the start of a race. A chorus of growls and groans went up from all over the place and a small army of Flood creatures began coming at them through the stalled cars. He and Izzy got to work as the creatures came for them, their muzzle flares lighting up the darkened tunnel. Even as he put down the Combat Forms with relative ease, his hands steady, his aim sure, Greg could feel worry beginning to gnaw at him. He'd run through a pair of magazines up top, and that put him down to four for his sidearm, with just over a dozen shells for the shotgun.

And there were a lot of Flood.

The pistol ran dry, and he ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in. Down to three now, and still there were a fair amount. And he knew Izzy wasn't in much better condition. They were going to have to start fighting with hand-to-hand at this rate, and he didn't like his chances of taking a Combat Form on up close and personal, let alone several. The gunshots banged out, the Flood roared and pieces of them flew off in sprays of corrupted viscera, and their bodies slammed to the floor of the tunnel, occasionally hitting derelict vehicles on the way down.

Finally, after he had expended another magazine and a half, the tide of Flood ceased, and they were alone once more.

"Damn," Izzy growled, slowly lowering her pistol. "Way too many."

"Yeah. I'm down to a mag and a half, you?" he replied.

"Two mags," she said, reloading. "That shotgun?"

"Fourteen shells," he replied.

She sighed. "There'd better be some damned ammo down here, or we're toast."

"Yeah. Let's start getting these cars out of the way."

"How do you wanna do it?"

"We pop them into neutral and shove them. Unless you had another thought?"

"We could shove them with the Hog," she replied.

"Okay, we'll do that when we've had enough of doing it ourselves."

"Fine."

They got to work after making sure there were no more Flood. Greg settled into his focused and alert mindset as much as he could as Izzy got into the nearest car and popped it into neutral, then he began shoving the damned thing out of the way. She pulled on the steering wheel to help guide it. He made sure to remind himself why he was doing this: to help out his fellow Marines and any number of civilians looking for refuge. Polaris Island wasn't exactly what he'd call ideal...but there were likely many worse places on Wintermute right now.

Once the car was out of the way, Izzy got out, and they switched places. He got into the next one and guided it while she pushed. They repeated this process another eight times before they reached a large gap where there were no other cars for quite a ways. With that annoying task out of the way, they walked back to their own vehicle, turned it back on, and started driving. Greg found himself thinking of the way ahead as they drove slowly through the darkness, leaving the sun's cold light behind. It was going to be...

Difficult.

He didn't know what he would find once he got to the other side of the tunnel, but he doubted it would be anything good. If he had to guess, he'd say that Becker was going to, regretfully, give him the unfortunate news that he'd have to make the fifty mile trip to his present location all on his own. It wouldn't surprise him, honestly, with how everything had gone since coming to this miserable place. They pulled over as they got to the first of the rooms: a maintenance bay. They got out and he covered Izzy as she pulled the door open and went inside.

He heard her curse and fire off a shot. Something shrieked and then a second shot sounded, and he heard the thump of a body.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied.

He waited for a few more minutes, listening to her rustle around in there, occasionally cursing. Greg couldn't help but smile a little. What, exactly, was he getting himself into with Izzy? He liked her. A lot. He was realizing in that slow kind of way most guys do sometimes, that he actually liked her a lot more than he initially thought. Probably because his judgment was clouded by, well, lust. She was very beautiful, in a really rough kind of way. There was a lot to like about her, even if she had some trust and anger issues.

But every relationship was a little like playing Russian Roulette.

It probably would either go well, or at least end well or neutrally, but there was a chance it could misfire and blow up on you. And some of those misfires, if you really cared, if you fell in love...that had the chance to do some permanent damage.

That was life, though, right?

"Done," Izzy said as she emerged from the metal cave that was the maintenance bay.

"Anything?" he asked as they got back into the Hog.

"Nothing imminently useful. I threw a few tools into my kit that might help, but otherwise, nothing," she replied.

They spent another half an hour moving down the tunnel, stopping twice to shift cars out of the way, and once to kill a pocket of Flood creatures, and once more to check out the storage room. It had a bunch of stuff that would probably be useful to the Marines and civilians who were on their way here, but didn't have much use to them in the moment. And finally, they came to the halfway point, and found something unexpected.

"Is that what I think it is?" Izzy asked as Greg rolled to a halt not far from where the generator room was supposed to be.

"It sure looks like it," Greg replied.

Off to the left side of the tunnel was a wrecked vehicle. But this was no civilian vehicle. It was a Carrier Warthog, painted white and gray. The windshield was broken, the driver's door was ripped off, and two of the tires were shredded. They both got out and slowly approached the wrecked vehicle. Although Greg had no hope of other survivors, this would be a really nice place for a cache of guns and ammo. As he came up to the vehicle, he peered cautiously into the interior, and saw a lot of blood. No bodies though.

He was sure some of those Flood he'd put down had been wearing military fatigues.

With a quiet sigh, Greg performed a quick search of the Carrier Hog.

"Oh yes," he whispered as he looked in the back.

"What? Please tell me you found guns," Izzy replied.

"Yep. Shotguns. Military grade M90As, and a big box of shells," he answered. His relief was intense, like a cool wave flowing through his body. Greg set his shotgun aside and grabbed the M90A model and passed it to Izzy, then grabbed the second one for himself. He checked it out, made sure it was intact, and deemed it functional. It was empty though, and there were spent casings around, so obviously it had seen some use. He took a moment to divide the shotgun shells among them. He'd have to abandon the shells he'd already gathered, as this military-grade piece of hardware took eight gauge, but Greg couldn't bring himself to mind right then.

They each managed to get three full loads, which was eighteen total for the As. No pistol ammo, though, but it was going to have to be enough.

"There's the generator," Izzy said, nodding to the door a little farther down the way after checking out her weapon. Greg made his way over and opened up the door, peering inside. He was glad that this model also had a flashlight built in, and it was more powerful to boot. The interior of the generator room was a wreck, and it looked like the generator had seen some damage in the fighting. Izzy saw it and cursed.

"Great," she muttered after they'd cleared the room and checked out all the shadows. "Okay, gimme a few minutes."

Greg nodded and went to stand at the door, reminding himself to grab his civilian model shotgun and toss it back in his own Warthog. Or maybe not. Maybe he should leave it here, in case someone else needed it during desperate times.

Something growled, off in the dim shadows of the way yet gone.

Greg raised the shotgun, holding it firmly, feeling his pulse begin to quicken. He thought he was handling his first contact with the Flood pretty decently, considering the situation and how freaky they were, but it still made his heart rate double in the span of a few seconds. He heard plodding footsteps, getting closer.

"How's it coming?" he asked.

"Fine, why?" Izzy replied.

"We've got company."

"Can you handle it?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Okay, tell me if you need help."

"Will do."

He waited, aiming his shotgun and flashlight towards the sound. There were definitely more than one of them, he could tell that much. He waited, his breath foaming on the chilled air beneath the ice and the sky. Slowly, they walked into his light. One appeared. Then two. Then four. Then six. Well...this wasn't looking great.

"I might need help," he said.

"Okay, I'm coming," Izzy replied.

One nice thing about the A model: it had a much longer effective range than the regular M90. Greg tracked the nearest one until it was within that range, and then squeezed the trigger. The shotgun boomed and jerked in his grasp, loosing an eight gauge slug shell and obliterating the thing's chest. It seemed to come apart under the force of the impact, blasted away into a cloud of decayed greenish