Epidemic: A Half-Life 2 Modification
Hello and welcome!

Welcome to the website for the Half-Life 2 modification, Epidemic.

As some may know, many horror-genre mods taking place in zombie filled enviroments are becoming ever increasing these days.However, Epidemic strives to set itself apart from the rest. Epidemic is a mod highly inspired by the works of George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and the upcoming Land of the Dead). Well, for the most part, here's a little snippit of what's going on:

10:15 PM, Camarillo, California. Wednesday December 14, 2003

For Doctor Dashiel ("dash") Parker, this had to qualify as one of the weirdest days of his residency in the ER of St. John?s he had ever experienced. He was plenty used to the mind numbing exhaustion of long days in the ER, but today took the gold medal for mental beat-downs with a perfect score. He had never seen such a bizarre mix of cases come into the ER as he had today. Almost all of them had suffered bites or cuts from fellow citizens in what appeared to be some kind of a street brawl. The victims were sullen and mean-tempered, and he managed to get precious little from them concerning the rhyme or reason for their injuries. He had been forced to simply patch them up and move on to the next battered patient. He heads home for a quick shower and some badly needed sleep?.

Deputy Tyrone Banks was having an equally bizarre day. The Camarillo Sherrifs Dept. had set a county record for arrests - all of them similar in nature and perpetrated by what should have been average, law abiding citizens. Something big was going on - people didn?t just start brawling in the streets for no reason. One of them even bit his assisting officer Julia ! Now he was worried that she had gotten something from this guy, as she had become very ill shortly afterward and he had to give her a ride home. He had been tempted to take her straight to St. John?s, but she had talked him out of it and taken her home instead. She reassured him that she was going to disinfect the wound and take a bunch of Excedrin and she would be fine by tomorrow. Somehow he doubted that ?.

Andrea Kerlocavich?s day at least STARTED ok, but it was apparently going downhill in a hell of a hurry. She had decided to take a little holiday in sunny California from her boring accounting job in upstate NY, and had driven all the way cross country in a coffee fueled marathon that had brought her to the Sunset Inn in Camarillo. Finally arriving at the Inn at around 11:00 PM, she is just beginning to realize that maybe Camarillo is not the ideal vacation hot-spot she was led to believe ?.



11:30 PM, Camarillo California Wednesday December 14, 2003

Dashiel awakes to a knocking on his door, wondering who the hell could be pounding on his door at such an ungodly hour. He peeks bleary-eyed through the blinds on the window next to his front door and sees that it is his next-door neighbor, Steve.

Wanting only to get rid of him as fast as possible so he can get back to bed, he grudgingly pulls open the door and immediately forgets about insulting Steve?s bad timing. Something is horribly wrong. Steve's hair is matted with blood, his skin pale and almost transparent. He was standing in a weirdly stooped way, as if his neck or back had broken - which was of course impossible - he wouldn?t be ABLE to stand if that were the case. Before Dashiel can begin to ask him what the hell happened, Steve is lunging straight at him, making a frightening noise like a scalded cat as he comes. Dashiel is driven straight back across his living room by this howling thing that was once his neighbor and into the kitchen. Holding off his attacker with one hand, he gropes madly for the big carving knife and finally wraps his hand around it. Without thinking he buries it in his attackers forehead. Steve?s body tensed for a few seconds then slumped to the floor. Dashiel starts to think "Oh my God...what have I done?" when his Doctor's eye notices something EXTREMELY strange about his neighbors current condition. There was no blood running from around the knife. There was a red gash there, but the fluid oozing from this wound resembled red jelly. In fact it looked like it was already coagulated ! He knows this is impossible - one must be dead for quite some time before blood INSIDE a body starts to coagulate. But before he can ponder this apparent total disregard to human anatomy he hears a scream from outside. He walks slowly back through the living room to his front door again and stands in utter disbelief. Outside his normally sedate and urban surroundings is complete chaos. Black smoke filled the sky. He could see people from the apartment complex, people he once knew, and several he didn't, running in terror from more people who were in the same apparent state as Steve.

Deciding that Steve?s death would have to wait until he found out why the world had suddenly gone stark raving mad, Dashiel grabs his car keys heads for his car. But wait ?..its...! Even before he reaches the car he notices the steady stream of gasoline pouring from his car.Not far from his mailbox is a dead man with a pistol gripped in his cold, rigor-mortom grasp.Dashiel walks up to seize the gun;however, it is empty. As he ponders this latest development, he observes what looks like one of the Camerillo Sheriffs deputies roar by in a dump truck heading towards the middle of town. Maybe the deputy had his patrol car stolen. His shell shocked mind finds this somehow deliciously funny. Following the truck like a pack of hungry wolves hounding their next dinner was what looked like a large group of deranged pedestrians, bloody and broken. Some of their arms flopped uselessly as they ran, blindly chasing the truck as it sped around the corner and out of sight. Completely at a loss for what to do next, he decided he would have to make his way to the nearest police station and maybe find out what the hell was going on ?..

11:30 PM, Camarillo California Wednesday December 14, 2003

The radio in Deputy Tyrone Banks's squad car crackles to life at approximately 11:35. Domestic disturbance call down on the west side of town near Spanish Hills. "Law enforcement assistance requested" the operator droned robotically. Tyrone grumbles a bit at this - anytime law enforcement is requested on a disturbance call it usually means that the situation has already escalated to the point where someone will need to be cuffed. That would mean he would have to put on the rubber gloves to guard against AIDs, and he hated them. In Tyron?s mind nothing ruined the image of a law enforcement faster than having a cop in full dress uniform pulling on those thin rubber gloves. He puts the car in drive and heads out for the east side of town. Upon arriving at the address he notes with alarm the car in the driveway with its lights still on, and drivers door flung open. That usually meant a pissed off boyfriend or husband coming home to surprise the cheating partner. He grabs his hat off the seat and unsnaps the safety strap on his holster. He jams his hat on top of his head and scoops up his MAG-lite flashlight. It was a big 4-D cell job, and doubled nicely as a night stick. He left the squad cars engine running and hurried up to the front door. Spotting the splintered door jam where the lock should be brings on the rush of adrenaline kicking in. This was probably going to be a bad one. He abandoned the standard procedure of announcing himself and pushed the front door open. Once inside, Tyrone sees a man attacking a woman who he?s got pinned on the floor. He yanks the gun from it's hoilster and bellows in his best tough cop voice.

"ALLRIGHT PUNK-ASS! HANDS IN THE AIR !"

And then things seemed to slow down to a crawl, like those funky Matrix movies he was always hearing about.

The man turns to him, his face smeared with dark blood. Oh yes, this was going to very bad. Maybe shooting bad. Tyrone steels himself for the possibility that he might have to blow this guy away. Fifteen years on the force and he hadn?t had to do it yet. But this might be his unlucky day. He cant even tell if the women on the floor is still alive. She hadn?t moved at all when he came in. "Ma?am ?"

"Are you alright maam?"

No answer. The contorted figure of the man continued to stare at him, drops of the women?s blood collecting on his chin. Tyrone looked harder at the women and suddenly see?s why she hasn?t moved.

Her throat is gone. There is nothing but a ragged shiny hole, slick with fresh blood, between her chin and breast. Tyrone senses the bright metallic taste of fear flooding his mouth, and tightens the grip on the 9mm pistols black grip. Tyrone flicks his gaze back to the man huddled over her now dead body and tries to fight down the panic threatening his normally cool cop demeanor.

"Don't move!" He growls.

"Get the fuck off of her. You're under arrest for first degree murder."

Nothing. The guy continues to stare - seemingly right through him.

"Get off of her RIGHT NOW or swear to god I?m going to blow your head off ."

And then the guy does the one thing Tyrone would have bet his retirement he would NOT do. He turns back to the women on the floor and starts busying himself again with her remains. Tyrone takes grim note of the guys lifeless eyes, thinking they looked just like a sharks - black and totally soulless - and pulls the trigger.

At that range it was impossible to miss, and Tyrone was a damn fine shot. The nine millimeter round plows into the side of the man's neck and he topples off the woman with a lifeless thud. Keeping the Beretta gripped tightly in hand, he went back out to the car to call in his very first one-eighty-seven.Two civilians down, back up requested. Tyrone pulled the mic off the clip and tried to keep his voice from shaking.

"This is deputy Banks. I have a code one-eighty-seven, two dead requesting immediate medical assistance. Repeat. I have an one-eighty-seven. Two dead and needing immediate medical assistance."
He let go of the button and waited for the dispatcher to tell him what he badly needed to hear. But instead of the dispatchers reassuring voice telling him that the coroners big Suburban SUV was on the way he heard something that frightened him more than anything that had happened thus far.

Nothing.

Nothing but faint static. He keyed the radio again and repeated his message, trying but definitely not succeeding to keep the edge off his voice. Still nothing. What the hell was going on ?

That was when he heard the faint squeal of the houses front door hinges. He dropped the radios mic and spun around, but the Mossberg caught the edge of the cars window frame and tumbled uselessly down to the drivers side floor. Cursing loudly, he reached for the standard issue Mossberg shotgun clipped between the two front seats. He thought the guy should have been dead as a door-nail, but if by some miracle he was still on his feet he was going to put him down again right quick. When he got the Mossberg out of its clip and turned around, he was shocked to see the women with the bloody hole in her neck standing between the house and the car. By all rights she should have been a corpse, but there she was, swaying drunkenly toward him. He held up one hand in a stopping gesture, and spoke to her in a calming voice.

"Ok ma?am, you are badly hurt. I called in for medical assistance..." but as he said this, he suddenly realized that she had the same black lifeless eyes as her attacker had. What the hell kind of wacky drugs were these people on out here that was turning them into apparent zombies ? She kept coming toward him, and it looked like he was going to have to shoot her too. Two shootings by his hands in one night. He couldn?t believe it. He pleaded with her one more time to stop and lie down until help arrived, but it was no good. He brought the twelve gauge up and unloaded straight into her chest. But just as he was pulling the trigger, she stumbled on a rock buried in the dirt driveway, lowering herself just a bit in front of the Mossbergs blast. This resulted in the gun cutting through the ragged hole where her throat would have been. Her head lolled back at an extreme angle, and the body dropped backwards like a rag doll. He lowered the gun and stepped out away from the car so he could see her.

He wanted to make sure she was going to STAY down.

He tiptoed around the front of the car so he could see all of her. Her head lay at almost right angles to the stump of her neck, but surprisingly very little blood was coming from her body. But he was sure she was going to stay down now, so that was a relief. He heard the rattle and rumble of a big truck coming up the road and walked a little ways down the driveway to see if the damn coroner was finally showing up. It wasn?t the coroner - just a big old Camarillo City dumptruck coming toward him. He was surprised though when the truck slammed on its brakes and swerved to the side of the road in front of him. The heavy set driver started talking excitedly and too fast about some kind of riot going on in town. He was about to force him to slow down and explain when he heard a loud hissing behind him, like the world's largest snake. The dump truck driver stopped blabbering and just pointed behind him. Tyrone turned around and saw a small crowd of bloody, mangled townspeople staggering around from the back of the house. There was no way he was ever going to get back to the car. He heard the passenger door of the truck open and the driver was shouting at him. "Get in ! I've seen what's goin on! If you want to live another night - GET IN!" Tyrone wasn?t in a mind to argue with him - he levered himself up into the cab and slammed the door. As the driver started to shift into gear to get them moving, the window on the driver's side was shattered by tattered hands.The same tattered hands grabbed the driver, even being as heavy as he was, and dragged him through the window.As this happened, the man was cut several times by glass fragments still in the frame.Tyrone took the wheel. As he sped through town, Tyrone just happens to see a guy dressed in a hospital uniform standing gawking at the chaotic scene of what was once a peaceful town. There was no time now to stop and see if the guy was a doctor and maybe could help them - he had to get to the station ??

11:36 PM, Camarillo California Thursday December 15, 2003

"That'll be 45 dollars miss."

The pimply faced desk clerk at the Sunset motel blows bubblegum scented breath in her face as he talks. Andrea Kerlocavich?s feels a frown of frustration form on her pretty face. She had very little money. The small NY firm she was working for paid poorly and she needed to stretch her meager vacation budget as far as it could possibly go. She decided to try the oldest trick in the book on this poor kid - show him a little skin.

Andrea was a firm believer in the old "show a little, save a lot" method of doing business.

"Well I don?t know if I have that much- let me go out to my bike and see what I have."

She walks slowly back out to Kawasaki Ninja 600 R outside, making damn sure to put a seductive little sway to her hips as she does. She knows the clerk at the desk probably has his eyes glued to her ass, so she wants him to get the full show. Once she gets to her ride, she unzips the front of her leather jumpsuit and exposes a judicious amount of cleavage before opening the bikes saddle bag and pulling out her wallet. She saunters slowly back in to the front desk, letting the clerk get a good long look at her ample chest works.

"Now?" she purrs in her best sex-kitten voice "How much did you say a room was going to cost me ?

"Oh! ? uhm...uhmm...well ya know....well...for you ma?am I guess I can give you the ?uhmm....honeymooners discount? I guess."

The clerk stutters, a blush filling his face.

"And how much is that ?" she asks.

Chewing his gum at an incredible pace now, the kid tells her it will be 35 bucks. She hands him the money and receives a room key attached to one of those big plastic tabs with the room number printed on it. She takes the key and walks back out, giving the kid one last look at her backside as she climbs on the bike. She blows him a kiss before donning her helmet, and she cant help smiling to herself as she motors around the back of the office to find her room. That would probably be in that kids wet dreams for at least a week. She parked the bike in front of the faded door to number 47 and goes in. She tosses the brightly colored helmet on the floor and flops down on the thin mattress, glad this long trip is finally over. She can feel the coffee buzz that?s kept her riding for the past 24 hours wearing off, and sleep will quickly claim her. As she is about to pass out, the room reverberates from an incredibly loud crash. Wide awake again, she dashes to the window, just in time to see the front grill of a big tanker truck smashing through the support posts holding up the archway at the motel's front office. But the truck is still moving, and she sees that its headed her way. Worse yet, she can see what looks like TWO people in the trucks cab, apparently fighting each other instead of driving the damn thing. Andrea dives to the floor sure in her mind that this crappy vacation is going to end in her firey death by tanker truck. Luckily for her, the tanker hits something else first. Unluckily for her, it?s a car belonging to one of the other guests. The impact brings the tanker to a shuddering halt, snapping two of the filling hose connections on the tankers belly. 89 octane fuel begins streaming from the tanker out onto the parking lot. A split second later, sparks from the trucks smashed battery box ignites the stream of gas, searing the sky with a huge explosion. As the tanker explodes, red hot shrapnel and flaming gasoline are thrown everywhere. Andreas poor Kawasaki is engulfed in burning fuel, and its small tank explodes a few seconds later, adding its own bright flames to the growing inferno. Andrea doesn?t morn the loss of bike for more than a few seconds, she scrambles for the door of the room to escape the rapidly heating air and flames. She barely manages to get past the burning pools of gas, and staggers toward the front office to find someone - anyone - that can call for help. She sees a few people wandering the parking lot. She also notices one of the people as the motels desk clerk. "Oh my God, it's so horrible. What was that truck driver doing ? We have to call the fire dept ! Are you all right ?"

The desk clerk pays no attention to her.

"Hey buddy, I'm talking to you!" Andrea yells as she grabs his shoulder to spin him around to face her. She suddenly realizes that this was a big mistake. The clerk leaps on her, snarling like a an animal, and tries to bite her. "What the hell is your problem!" She screams at him. She tries to stand up but the clerk has her pined down. He spits and snarls, making attempts to bite her throat. She tries desperately to fends off the attacks, and happens to spot a big chunk of tanker truck shrapnel lying next to her. Without even thinking about it, she grabs shrapnel, and drives it into the chin of the clerk, straight into his skull. The clerk grows limp, and she pushes him off to the side. She stands up and heads straight for the front office, wanting only to get to a phone. She finds the managers office and lets herself in, looking for a phone. She spots the managers phone on his desk and snatches it up, but the line is dead. The tanker truck has ripped down all the wires from the pole to the building. She screams in frustration and runs back outside. The section of the motel where she had parked her bike was now engulfed in flames, and the entire parking lot was lit in a bright orange glow. Andrea vaguely remembers passing a sheriff station a few miles back down the road, and decides she is going to have to hoof it back into town to get some help. The motel was a lost cause, but she couldn?t think of anything else to do. As she prepares herself for a long walk, she spots a tire iron lying in the parking lot, thrown from the remains of one of the flaming wrecks in the parking lot. She wasn?t exactly sure why, but she feels that it might be a good idea to arm herself - just in case ?.

All three individuals alone, but all three now heading for the same goal. In a world gone mad, this group of survivors must make some kind of sense of it all. What was going on ? Who else was left alive ? What were they going to do next ? Only you can find out.

Can you survive the Epidemic ?

With that out of the way, let's move on to some of the features:

Note that this list is subject to change, but if all goes according to plan we hope to implement:

-Limb Damage system

-Weight/Stamina system

-Unique "Fear" system

Also, a few multiplayer modes will include:

-Last Man Standing

-Ship Race

-Food and Rescue scramble.

There's also several other things, and the above listed are just vague names, the real information will show itself when you play.

http://epidemicHL2.tribe.net